Altered Natives' Say Yes to Another Excess - TWERK

Since their teenage years, Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud have been going to discos and have turned it into a place where to practise. From London to NYC, they go from club to club: drum&bass, jungle, dubstep, reggae, bashement, house, voguing, hype as anthropological research centres. That is where they have become familiar with and learnt Jamaican dancehall, krump, house, split & jump… – dances which, regardless of their formal and spiritual differences, have a certain playfulness in common (with music, and between the technical principles and the ideals determining them).

As for Altered Natives’ Say Yes To Another Excess ⎯ TWERK, they collectively and intuitively make their way through a specific impure writing process, enlightened by graphic and organic devoured dances – beyond references. Together with Alex Mugler, Ana Pi and Elisa Yvelin, they have set themselves the challenge to trust dance, its expressive, brotherly, poetic, preconscious and discursive powers.

This work and this playful writing process are achieved in close relation to a musical investigation around Grime music. As an electro music that comes from East London in the early 2000s, Grime combines, mixes and transforms sounds from dancehall, hip-hop and UK garage.

The syncretic ferociousness of this style, which seems to be hanging between two contradictory speeds, between the abstraction of synthetic sounds and MCs’ sensual emergency, interacts with the various influences which have inspired the dances. It is the first time that DJs from the Grime scene (Elijah and Skilliam of London label Butterz) play in a theatre and collaborate with contemporary dancers.