Artists & Projects Directory

• Cie Heddy Maalem
• Dan Hurlin
• David Roussève/REALITY
• Emio Greco|PC
• Gregory Maqoma
• Kassys
• Marc Bamuthi Joseph
• Ralph Lemon
• Rha Goddess
• The America Project
• Yasuko Yokoshi

David Roussève/REALITY

Equal parts wild humor and grit, Saudade is an artistically ambitious, deeply personal statement by David Roussève about the need to understand modern times when life, as a series of colliding extremes, cannot be understood, only lived.  An ode to the idea of "bittersweet"-that single moment when great joy and agony are experienced together-Saudade is a work with a powerful emotional immediacy, surprising visual juxtapositions and unexpected narrative connections. Saudade premieres in February 2009 with subsequent touring worldwide.

The heart of the work is the choreographic language created by Roussève in a highly collaborative process with seven diverse, international dancers who are familiar with the complex intersection between traditional world and postmodern dance.  This group has generated a movement vocabulary based less on specific technique than on the conveyance of metaphor and emotion through highly physical movement and abstract imagery.

As narrator, Roussève moves amidst the dancers, stopping periodically to perform character monologues from his uniquely southern, African American perspective-the stories of oppressed people finding a reason to go on in a harsh everyday reality.  His text also contains mystical images of wonder and flight, of the night sky and the deep southern bayou, which are concretized by Peter Melville's set pieces and lighting by David Ferri.  Video created by Ashley Hunt moves back and forth between the abstract and literal; between the metaphoric and the nitty-gritty, socially grounded elements of the text.

The emotional glue of Saudade is Fado music.  ("Saudade" is a Portuguese word referring to the emotional longing of Fado.)  As a deep reflection of the human soul, Fado is quintessentially bittersweet, and contemporary and traditional Fado recordings unite the work at the level of subtext.  Moving back and forth between the global, the local and the personal, Saudade, at times, fills the stage with movement, music and image; at others, with intimate moments of dance or quiet speech.  This shifting perspective-related by the dancing, the stories, the imagery and the passion of Fado-gives Saudade its particular resonance.