Bombyx Mori

EVENT DESCRIPTION

In 2023, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels co-presents with French May Arts Festival, Bombyx Mori by Ola Maciejewska at the Sheung Wan Civic Centre as part of a Dance Festival in Hong Kong.

In this work for three dancers, Ola Maciejewska draws inspiration from Loïe Fuller’s signature invention, the Serpentine Dance. She brings the iconic legend face to face with her paradoxes and intangible character. The title, Bombyx Mori refers to the silkworm, which has become entirely dependent on humans for its survival. Dance, archives and artifice are interwoven in this performance, engendering a metaphor for the hybrid nature of things.

A trailblazing dancer who defied characterization, Loïe Fuller was a performing artist before the term even came into being. A controversial figure in Western dance, she merged dance with special effects to capture the movement of fire, water and other natural elements, hiding her body under vast sweeps of silk. As the first person to use electric lights on stage and to explore movement outside the human body, she was a force for innovation in the world of theatre and dance. She collaborated with such pre-eminent figures as Auguste Rodin, the Lumière brothers, Henri Sauvage and Marie Skłodowska-Curie.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Dancer and choreographer Ola Maciejewska made her choreographic debut in 2011 with Loie Fuller: Research, a solo performance which she later adapted for three dancers in a 2015 work titled Bombyx Mori. From 2016 to 2018, she was an associate artist at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen in Normandy. Her most recent work, Dance Concert, premiered in Taiwan at the National Taichung Theatre and in France at the Pompidou Center as part of the Festival d’Automne à Paris. In 2020, she received a grant from Internationale Tanzmesse NRW to work in the Pina Bausch Foundation archives. Her upcoming project Figury (Przestrzenne), which will premiere the 4th of March 2022 at CNDC Angers, consists of a solo performance, a film and a collective choreography workshop investigating the history of the dancing body and its relationship with nature.