Starving Dingoes - 2021

Such was the power of madness, announcing man's senseless secret, that the lowest point of his fall is also his first morning - Michel Foucault

Starving Dingoes is a rite.
Vividly carved from the marble of our most primal fears, it is a creation for five dancers, with which Léa Tirabasso bends in every directions the theme of our ineluctable destiny. 
Wrapped up in a musical ambiance going from the lyricism of operatic music to the bestiality of contemporary electronic music, it is through corporeal, visual and sound uppercuts that the piece bucks up our bulimia for life and our anxiety of death.

Oncologists Simone Niclou and Alex Gentry-Maharaj have been collaborating and helping create bridges between Dance and Science. Looking at the phenomenon of the apoptosis (programmed cellular death) the piece questions the notions of sacrifice.

There are 3 approaches to the piece: 
- Philosophical: how do we react in front of the finitude of our existence; do we accept, refuse, accelerate it or divert ourselves from the thought of it. 
- Scientific: what do healthy cells do around a cancerous, dysfunctional cell; do they have the possibility to gang up against it, to make it disappear, to annihilate it? I would like to imagine that they do. 
- Social: how do we deal with the element that does not seem to work well in a group, what or who do we decide to sacrifice in order to save the whole?


FUTURE DATES 
Saturday 4th March 2023 / 19:30 
The Place, London (UK)
BOOK HERE

Thursday 9th March 2023 / TTBC 
Undisciplined Festival, South East Dance 
Attenborough Centre, Brighton (UK)
BOOK HERE


PRESS
Starving Dingoes, is vividly carved from the marble of our most primal fears. And if the audience stayed quiet in front of Tirabasso’s tenebrous vision, it is because it was clearly impossible to remain indifferent to the obscure forces flowing from the piece. (…) It is a piece that is frank, new, hyper-dark and impactful. It is a testimony rendered through dance, not looking for the beauty or the ugly, but simply looking for the right. (…) 
Starving Dingoes is a beautiful show of knowable and yet bizarre choreography: new, real, and passionate. (…) 
Godefroy Gordet, LAND (LU)
FULL ARTICLE HERE (FR)

Survival exercice, sink or swim, this piece shakes the collective body’s piggy bank in a transe of madness.
FB of Rosita Boisseau journalist for Le Monde (FR)

UFO in the landscape of dance (...) Unexplored depths of our brain, like a return to the origins of life... The piece is disconcerting and astonishing. Unclassifiable
Patrick Denis, La Provence (FR)
FULL ARTICLE HERE (FR)

Strange, Eccentric and furious. 
Starving Dingoes encapsulates the unbridled ferocity in humanity’s urgency for survival in the face of the brutal offerings of life.
Kelly Hood, Era Journal (UK)
​FULL ARTICLE HERE (EN)

It is the humbling humour of Starving Dingoes that makes its unexpected vision of life and death all the more accessible. Tirabasso and her team have done something more than create a show (…) with such conceptual vigour and emotional urgency. It could even become, if it hasn’t already, an allegory of our time. 
Nicholas Minns, Writing about dance (UK)
FULL ARTICLE HERE (EN)

It is both joyful and tragic and inspires us to question the innate desire we all have to belong. 
Janine Henderson, Behind the arras (UK)
FULL ARTICLE HERE (EN)
​
The movement vocabulary becomes even more agitated, quirky, yet remains oddly beautiful, certainly compelling. Bodies twitch and jerk. They shuffle and edge around each other. There are strong hints of uncertainty. 
David Mead, Seeing Dance (UK)
FULL ARTICLE HERE (EN)

Nature itself is at the image of the choreography: in its appearance disorganized but in its depths, pertinently crafted. 
Peter Avondo, Snobinart (FR)
FULL ARTICLE HERE (FR)


Choreographer / Director:      Léa Tirabasso
Producer:         Vasanthi Argouin
Administrator:          Sousana Eang
Dancers:      Catarina Barbosa, Laura Patay/Lauren Jenkins/Stefania Pinato, Karl Fagerlund Brekke, Alistair Goldsmith/William Cardoso, Laura Lorenzi 
Composer:     Johanna Bramli & Ed Chivers
Lighting and Set Designer:     Nicolas Tremblay, Thomas Bernard 
Scientific Advisors:      Simone Niclou, Aleksandra Gentry-Maharaj
Philosophy Advisor:      Thomas Stern
Animal Transformation Coach:      Gabrielle Moleta
Clown:             Peta Lily
PR (Avignon Festival):          Cédric Chaory
PR (UK tour):          Chloé Nelkin

R&D Photo & teaser credit: Camilla Greenwell
Stage Photo credit: Bohumil Kostohryz

CONTACTS

Touring & international development
Vicenç Mayans 
vicens@palosantoprojects.com
https://www.palosantoprojects.com

Press Agent
UK TOUR (2021)
Chloé Nelkin 
info@chloenelkinconsulting.com 
https://www.chloenelkinconsulting.com 
FESTIVAL AVIGNON (2021)
​Cédric Chaory
cedricchaory@yahoo.fr
http://cedricchaorycommunication.fr 
UK TOUR (2023)
Martha Oakes

Administration
Sousana Eang
admin@leatirabasso.com

Production
Vasanthi Argouin 
prod@leatirabasso.com 

Technique
Nicolas Tremblay
louis.nico.tremblay@gmail.com 

Artistic Director
Léa Tirabasso 
info@leatirabasso.com 

SUPPORTS

Co-produced by
Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg (LU)
Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape, direction Yuval PICK, dans le cadre du dispositif Accueil-Studio (FR)
Commissioned by
The Place, London (UK)
Dance East, Ipswich (UK) 
Supported by
TROIS C-L, Centre de Création Luxembourgeois (LU)
Avec le soutien de la Maison de la Danse pour le prêt de studio (FR)
Le CN D, Lyon (FR)
La Chapelle / Cie La Baraka – Abou Lagraa & Nawal Aït Benalla en partenariat avec Agglo En Scènes - Théâtre des Cordeliers (FR)
Fond Culturel National du Luxembourg FOCUNA (LU)
DanceXchange, Birmingham (UK)
​Grant for the Arts, Arts Council England (UK) 
Fondation Indépendance (LU)