Dance: Elizabeth Damour

Composer: René B. Huysmans

Through a sudden space-time crack, an everyday life situation unfolds in an unexpected and powerful turmoil and rebellion. Is it a dream, a delirium, an earthquake, a nuclear accident…

The character seems overrun by uncontrollable inner forces and raw emotions mixing frustrations, anger and fear. Is this character a revengeful cleaning woman, a housewife close to madness, an old woman dismayed by life and love, a demiurge who wants to clean up the war …?

First performed at Licences Festival – Paris 

Butoh dance expresses that human beings are not accustomed to the order of life and existence. The Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa wrote: ‘Life impairs the expression of life’.

In 2000, after being away from the world of dance for 10 years, Elizabeth Damour was fortunate to train with Kim Manri in Osaka and then after with Japanese butoh masters, Atsushi Takenouchi, Katsura Kan…

Since then, she has performed solo and collective pieces in Europe, Brazil, Morocco and Japan. 

Her inspiration comes from narratives about humanity issues. Her practice is concerned with the search of a lost body, a body almost human, that resonates with Russian, Japanese and Arabic poetry. She develops her work through residencies in Japan and in Tbilisi (Georgia).

Residing in Paris, she is a Certified Psychosomatics Therapist, Coach, Dance and Art-Therapist and a regular lecturer, member of the CIPSR, the BAAT and the Squiggle in London.