Canine Jaunâtre 3
Marlene Monteiro Freitas
In 2024, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting the Festival d’Automne à Paris for the presentation of Canine Jaunâtre 3 by Marlene Monteiro Freitas.
Choreographer Marlene Monteiro Freitas has orchestrated the most carnivalesque of sports meets. No competition, no trophies, but lively cyborg bodies elatedly transgressing the frontiers between humans, animals and machines.
Upstage tennis net, scoreboard and whistle blows, the stage is set for a match… which will never begin. Proud of the heritage built on the carnivals she attended as a child in Cabo Verde, Marlene Monteiro Freitas is here to break the way things are. Canine Jaunâtre 3 is a Lego-like game where seventeen team members/dancers, adorning the same n°3 signs, robotic bodies and cartoon faces, must follow contradictory rules and principles. Do, undo, move forward, move back, these wonderful virtuosos with no apparent purpose, interchangeable yet perfectly distinct, progressively lead the human race into uncharted territories, where frontiers between humans, animals and machines are blurred. A useful training session to question our overly cushy perception habits.
© Marc Domage
About the artist
Marlene Monteiro Freitas
Marlene Monteiro Freitas was born in Cape Verde. She studied dance at P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels), Escola Superior de Dança and Dança and at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), then co-founded the Compass dance company in her native country. She has danced for Emmanuelle Huynh, Loïc Touzé, with Emmanuelle Huynh, Loïc Touzé, Tânia Carvalho and Boris Charmatz. several pieces, including Primeira Impressão in 2005, A Improbabilidade da Certeza and Larvar in 2006, Uns e Outros in 2008, A Seriedade do Animal in 2009, the solo Guintche in 2010, Paraìso, colecçao privada in 2012, Jaguar in 2015.
The Festival d'Automne invited him for the first time in 2017 with Bacchantes - prélude pour une purge, based on the work by Euripides. A year later, the Batsheva Dance Company commissioned a piece from her, Canine Jaunâtre 3. In 2020, she created Mal - Embriaguez Divina at Kampnagel (Hamburg) and became co-programmer of (un)common ground, a project looking at the territorial and artistic implications of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Marlene Monteiro Freitas has received numerous awards including a Silver Lion at the 2018 Venice Biennale. The Festival d'Automne is devoting a seven-part Portrait and and an exhibition.
© Peter Hönnemann
