Dog Rising
Clara Furey
The Canadian Clara Furey is no stranger to the international dance circuit. With her international breakthrough performance Dog Rising (2021), she can now be seen at CAMPO for the very first time. An ideal introduction to the work of this choreographer, whose latest creation will premiere at the Brussels Kunstenfestivaldesarts later this spring.
In Dog Rising, she continues her exploration of physical phenomena, which began with Cosmic Love (2017). With its celestial bodies launched into orbit, vibrating in a lustful and hypnotic ritual, the show reflects the life cycle and dynamic flow of matter. From primitive impulses to gestures that are sometimes sexual, sometimes mechanical, this creation comes together as a polyphony of pulsating bodies, alternately dissonant and unison.
Furey turns her attention to the way sound vibrations penetrate bones, the way our skeletons absorb shock, and listens intently to the presence of the body as it fully manifests itself.
As a point of departure for her physical research, Furey looked at bone conduction, a way of hearing sound as it resonates in a spiral trajectory through the bones. She prefers to imagine that the vibrating shocks strengthen rather than break us. Rather than dramatize the shock, so that we experience it on an emotional level, she frames it as something our skeleton needs to survive. Dog Rising opens the door to a spontaneous pleasure, its pulsations and shocks causing our emotions to fluctuate like waves. The piece revolves around neither narrative nor drama but pure sensation.
On stage, Baco Lepage-Acosta, Be Heintzman Hope and Brian Mendez erect an architecture of pleasure. The trio is inhabited and nourished by empathy and acute attention to the energy of the body and to others. Through their tireless movement work, tensions are released in the endless repetition of cyclical gestures. Dog Rising invites us to embark on an extreme journey, a mesmerising, haunting, and penetrating spiral. It is an invitation to grow and regenerate physical strength through shocks and discomfort sublimated into joy, with a musical score by Tomas Furey.
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Duration: 60 min