Mixing genres, reflecting upon and redefining formats, Latifa Laâbissi’s work seeks to bring onstage multiple offstage perspectives; an anthropological landscape in which stories, figures and voices are placed and highlighted. Going against the prevailing abstract aesthetic, she extrapolated a movement vocabulary built from the confusion of genres and social postures, from the beginnings of modernity. In 2001, she created Phasmes, a work haunted by the ghosts of Dore Hoyer, Valeska Gert and Mary Wigman. She then comes back to the german dance of the 20s, with her piece La part du rite with the dance historian Isabelle Launay, and with a lengthened version of Mary Wigman’s Witch Dance, which she called Écran somnambule [Somnambulist screen]. the use of voice and face as vehicles for minor states and accents is indivisiblely linked to the danced act in Self Portrait Camouflage (2006), Histoire par celui qui la raconte (2008) and Loredreamsong (2010). For Latifa Lâabissi the artistic action implies a displacement of traditional modes of production and perception: transmission, the sharing of knowledge, materials and the porosity of formats are inseparable from the creative process.
(Gilles Amalvi)
See: www.figureproject.com