Dance: Quentin Chaveriat

In 1940, Leonora Carrington fled France after the arrest of Max Ernst by the Nazis. Arriving in Madrid, she entered a state of heightened perception and imagination, before being forcibly interned in the psychiatric hospital of Santander, where she was subjected to violence, rape and drug-induced seizures. Out of this traumatic experience, she began to construct a complex personal mythology: a cosmogony populated by mysterious beings, occult maps and a promised realm of liberation she called “Down Below”.

Leonora explores this fragment of the artist’s life and work, between abyssal darkness and luminous persistence. Through butoh, avant-garde theatre and queer drag, Quentin Chaveriat creates an unclassifiable, humorous and haunting solo, asking how imagination can become a form of resistance when reality itself becomes oppressive.

Belgian actor, performer and butoh teacher based in Brussels, Quentin Chaveriat began studying with Seiji Tanaka in Nara in 2015. His practice has also been shaped by encounters with many different teachers. Since 2016, he has created performances with Sombre Compagnie, presented internationally in Europe, Japan, Chile, Vietnam and the USA. He teaches butoh in Belgium and internationally, while also performing in queer and drag cabarets as Memento, a drag-butoh creature.

He also works as a performer with renowned dance companies such as Mossoux-Bonté and t.r.a.n.s.i.t.s.c.a.p.e., and is currently developing a new creation with bodybuilders.

Leonora was created for the Queer Butoh Festival in New York.