Trigger warning

Manon Parent invites us in, as though it were her personal dance studio. Almost as though it were her home. So free, so happy – she dances to the music or in contrast to it, as in a small talk with the notes, with her body and sometimes with the audience. Dance becomes a direct expression of internal heights and discords to the soft, sometimes also melancholic piano melodies by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Between diffuse memories and concrete physical needs of the moment, Parent plays with a backpack as though it were a burden that weighs on the soul. In the process, she unveils her great technical abilities as well as an impressive inheritance of her family history. A wish for a new start viscerally burns in her, on stage as in life. Each gesture emerges ad hoc from the previous one, but still, everything seems planned in the greatest detail. This is precisely the special art of Ioannis Mandafounis, who developed a personal method to connect spontaneity with precision. For this native of Athens, who danced in the William Forsythe Company from 2005 to 2009 and was named the new art director of the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company after an internationally successful career as a choreographer, a circle is closed. Manon Parent and he cooperated in a multitude of projects, so that a relationship of trust could emerge between them from which this intimate solo is borne; it ultimately exudes a liberating spirit of optimism.

www.dresdenfrankfurtdancecompany.de