The starting point of the piece is the extravagant world of the illustrator Beatrice Alemagna, stories of great intricacy where the body is always abused, even broken. After Holeulone and Humus vertebra, the links between Karine Ponties and the singular look of the illustrators are extended, this time without the direct intervention of the artist in the creation process.
Instead of presuming that wonder is exclusive to children and the naive, a fleeting and agreeable feeling soon discarded when the object that caused it is understood or when returning to seriousness, one should perhaps consider that there is nothing more adult or more serious than wonder. Looking at it in from this perspective, wonder is not a simple emotion, but a capacity to be; it opens us towards the world, joyfully reveals our ignorance and offers us an awareness that is simultaneously more liberating and intimate.
It is a space where imagination finds its source, a place where shapes and colours are born; the place of childhood. This place, Lamali Lokta, is the childhood of Art, the first line, the sketch that places a limitless horizon within reach; a country sometimes prolific, sometimes arid, positioned on the ledge between reality and myth.
A world of paper, humanity’s sensitive support and imaginary double, the companion in its history, pliable material that submits to the demands of creation and resists the ravages of time, generously linking both sides of the mirror.
And from the first surging line, five figures appear, escaping their fiction, falling from the page to the floor. Five inadequate characters in search of themselves, breaching reality, attempting to reconstruct themselves, and gather together.
Lamali Lokta recounts this first line and the wild jaunt, the abrupt end, the return to self and new inspiration, this machine that with one irrevocable bound passes through us all, unfolding the universe.
“A profound movement, determined, strong, that endlessly unpeels the layers of movements and the reasons for making them. Dance by choreographer Karine Ponties rejects gratuitous aesthetics and heightens (often) bizarre stories without colouring them too heavily. (…) Certainly an expedition to be undertaken refuting all the clichés.” Rosita BOISSEAU, Télérama / Sortir, February 2012
