Robyn Orlin
- Live performance
- Pass Latitudes
- maison Folie Wazemmes, Lille
- 1h
In a corner the sky surrenders
unplugging archival journeys … #3 (for Volmir ❣️)
A solo, a large cardboard box, and the quest for survival as a principal story line. Following the revivals of her iconic work in a corner the sky surrenders – unplugging archival journeys, Robyn Orlin transmits her piece to the choreographer Volmir Cordeiro.
In 1994, the South African choreographer Robyn Orlin spent a few months in New York. She was impressed by the survival skills of the homeless people who were living on the streets on the Lower East Side, and – having not found a space where she could work, she created in a corner the sky surrenders: her first solo which she performed inside a large cardboard refrigator box. Nearly 30 year later, during the pandemic lockdown, the image of that box returned to her as a troubling echo of our newly cloistered, home-bound world. She then decided to teach this iconic work to several different artists, who would re-activate her work through other bodies, with their own stories. After Nadia Beugré in 2022 and Marta Izquierdo Munoz in 2024, she chose the Brazilian choreographer and artist-researcher Volmir Cordeiro to learn the solo in 2025, in a new incarnation which would transform the context yet again and prolong the life of a piece conceived as an aesthetic act of disobedience.
Accessibility infos :
- Text spoken in French without surtitles
With the support of Lieux Culturels Pluridisciplinaires de la Ville de Lille
Biography(s)
ROBYN ORLIN
Born in Johannesburg in 1955, Robyn Orlin is a dancer, choreographer and founder of the City Theatre & Dance Group (1988). In 1981, Adrienne C Sichel described her as “a very angry young dancer” during a solo she performed at the Breytenbach Theatre in Pretoria. Later, as Robyn’s reputation grew, she realised that she had in fact witnessed the choreographer’s first attempt to deconstruct, criticise and attack the colonial tradition of white classical ballet.
This critique is omnipresent in her work and won her worldwide acclaim in 2003 when she won the Laurence Olivier Award for ‘Daddy, I’ve seen this piece six times before and I still don’t know why they are hurting each other’ (1999), a satirical portrait of race relations, confrontation and the threat of democracy to ‘elitist’ Western dance forms. Perhaps the culmination of her socio-political critique came when she was commissioned by the Paris Opera to create ‘L’Allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato’ (2007). In this piece, Robyn uses star dancers and ballet dancers to demolish the hegemony of the tutu.
Known in South Africa as “the permanent irritation,” through her work she reveals the difficult and complex reality of her country. She combines various artistic expressions (text, video, plastic arts…) to explore a certain theatricality that is reflected in her choreographic vocabulary.
In co-production with the INA and ARTE, she directed her first film Hidden beauties, dirty histories in October 2004. Robyn Orlin was named Knight of the National Order of Merit (Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite) in 2009 and Knight of Arts and Letters (Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres) in 2015.
VOLMIR CORDEIRO
Volmir Cordeiro is a Brazilian choreographer, dancer and researcher. He holds a doctorate in dance from the University of Paris 8 and is the author of Ex-Corpo, a work dedicated to the figures of marginality in contemporary dance and the notion of the artist-researcher.
He studied theatre before working with the Brazilian choreographers Alejandro Ahmed, Cristina Moura and Lia Rodrigues. He joined the ‘Essais’ training programme at the CNDC in Angers in 2011.
As a choreographer, he has created a first cycle of three solos: Ciel (2012, premiered at the CNDC in Angers), Inês (2014, premiered at the Festival Actoral) and Rue (2015, premiered at the Musée du Louvre). He continues his creative work with the group pieces L’oeil, la bouche et le reste (2017, Festival Dañsfabrik in Brest) and Trottoir (2019, Festival Actoral in Marseille and Festival D’Automne in Paris). The solos Outrar (Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Belgium) and Métropole (Festival d’Automne) are following in 2021. In 2022, with Érosion, a creation for the CCN – Ballet de Lorraine, he revisited the Ballets Suédois, a Dadaist troupe based at the Théâtres des Champs-Elysées between 1920 and 1925. In 2023, he created Abri for the Val de Marne Biennale in Vitry, as well as Queimada, a creation in collaboration with the TAP-Théâtre Auditorium in Poitiers. In 2024, he created a piece for students at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Paris and a piece for students in training at the ABC Atlantique Ballet Contemporain at the Conservatoire de Musique et Danse de l’agglomération de La Rochelle. He is preparing his next creation with his Cie Donna Volcan for autumn 2025.
Credits
A project by Robyn Orlin
With Volmir Cordeiro
Lighting design and stage management: Beatriz Kaysel Velasco e Cruz
Stage Management alternating with Agathe Patonnier
Sound designer: Loup Gangloff
Costumes: Birgit Neppl
Diffusion: Damien Valette
Coordination: Bertille Zimmermann
Production : City Theatre & Dance Group and Damien Valette Production
Coproduction: Coproduction and residency as part of the Accueil Studio du Dancing programme, Centre de Développement Chorégraphique National Dijon Bourgogne-Franche-Comté,
With the support of : CND Centre national de la danse – in-residence and Espace Pasolini/Laboratoire artistique/Valenciennes in creative residency.
