Don Quichotte de la Tache (1988)

Pierre-Paul Savoie’s first choreographic repertoire includes solo pieces such as Tripes attisées (1987), a poignant study focusing on resilience, the hero Don Quixote de la Tache (1988) and pieces such as the Antichambre (1987), Encre de Chine (1991) and the experimental opera L’Ombre d’un doute (1992). Her choreographic style is reflected in a search for interdisciplinarity, a penchant for humour, acrobatic gestures and an assumed theatricality. Her work is part of a desire to democratize dance.

Pierre-Paul Savoie first addresses a literary work, Cervantes‘ Don Quixote, “in the deliciously delirious way of a comic book” (Le Devoir) .

Overlapping theater and dance, oscillating between the extravagance of the imagination and an innate taste for risk, this unusual piece is based on a scenography of heterogeneous objects: a horse-stick, a bicycle wheel shield, a spear that is too big and a windmill-fan, to beautifully embody the Knight in the Sad Figure, idealist with a big heart, derisory and pathetic heros.

Credits

Choreography: Pierre-Paul Savoie
Music: Ginette Bertrand
Decor: Bernard Lagacé
Lighting: Marc Parent

This choreography, which Pierre-Paul Savoie describes as an “epic burlesque”, was presented at the International Festival of New Dance in 1989.