Quartet (2019)
Fourth chapter of Practical Encyclopedia

Following the solo Chosen Portraits, Detours is the second stage work resulting from the corpus of Practical Encyclopaedia. Just as the choreographer did during the creation of her solo, this time the process has been shared with three other female performers. This invitation to participate in the making of the quartet, meant choosing between practices based on the familiarity or strangeness –a way to situate the performers vis-à-vis a gestural landscape. The selected eleven portraits that can be traced underneath the material presented on stage, reveal a vast spectrum of disparate activities, from hunting to makeup and blood donation, from Zumba to street workout. As the audience follows the group of four women practicing what would in daily life remain unclassified or undisclosed by means of conventionality, they are ineluctably confronted with forms of violence, alienation, dispossession, joy and resistance, as well as with the discovery of what allows the performers, still, to dance. The quartet is accompanied by a 15-minute film and the book Practical Encyclopaedia. Detours that we are free to explore in a reading room accessible to the public before and after the performance.

Duration: 1 hour

Concept and choreography: Lenio Kaklea
Performance 2020-2021: Liza Baliasnaja, Amanda Barrio Charmelo, Jacquelyn Elder, Lenio Kaklea
Performance 2019-2020: Jessica Batut, Nanyadji Ka-Gara, Lenio Kaklea et Elisa Yvelin
Dramaturgy: Lou Forster
Sound design and technical direction: Éric Yvelin
Light design and decor: Florian Leduc
Costumes and props: Alexia Caunille
Production: abd
Co-production: Traversées/Kimsooja Ville de Poitiers in collaboration with le TAP Scène
Nationale de Poitiers, Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans, Centre Pompidou Spectacle
Vivant in collaboration with festival Faits d’hiver - micadanses, Centre National de la Danse, Le
Quartz/Scène Nationale de Brest in collaboration with Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Le
Dancing CDCN Dijon Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Fondation Onassis/Athènes, PACT
Zollverein/Essen, far° Nyon Suisse

With the support of Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers and Tanzhaus Zürich

Photos: Marc Domage





Practical Encyclopedia. Detours
Publication (2019)

Practical Encyclopedia. Detours, edited by choreographer Lenio Kaklea and curator/art historian Lou Foster, is the second publication pertaining to the corpus of Practical Encyclopaedia. Published by les presses du reel in November 2019, this multilingual edition (French, German, Greek, English) is comprised of 600 unique stories collected in 6 different European cities: Athens, Aubervilliers, Essen, Guissény, Nyon, and Poitiers. As the above trajectory implies, the content of the book is an attempt to gather together a wide range of activities, rituals, trades all of which testify to the polymorphous territories underneath the general term society. No sooner than we delve into its pages, we understand that it is more than an archive of individual practices, it is an opening to think differently the place in which they emerged, each city as topos for both experiential and strongly sociopolitical gestures.

17x23cm (softcover), 196 pages

Editorial direction: Lou Forster and Lenio Kaklea
Texts in French, English and Greek: Lou Forster and Lenio Kaklea
Texts in German: Annika Stadler
Translations: Sabine Macher, Eleni Tranouli and Macklin Kowal
Prrofreading: Anne-Laure Blusseau, Sabine Macher, Eleni Tranouli and Macklin Kowal
Graphique design: Jean-Claude Chianale
Coordination: Pierre Simon
Publishing: abd and Les presses du réel
Co-production: Traversées/Kimsooja - Ville de Poitiers, Phenomenon, Centre culturel suisse. Paris
Interviews: Lenio Kaklea with Matthias Düking, Oscar Lozano, Pierre Simon, Chabanne Terchi and Karolina Theleriti
Transcriptions: Anne-Laure Blusseau, Matthias Düking, Annabel Glauser, Philippe Obersonet and Karolina Theleriti
Production of the field work: abd
Co-production: Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, PACT Zollverein, far ̊ festival des arts vivants de Nyon, Traversées/Kimsooja - Ville de Poitiers

With the support of Dolce Far Nulla, Athens

Publication available here: www.lespressesdureel.com