Coupé-Decalé at Theatre National

"In the Act 1" I am not a sub-culture, rather a gallery of self-portraits with a history walking in circles ", Robyn Orlyn chose to be inspired by my personal history (family and cultural) to"manufacture"solo.". The images are real, but
the stories and characters are fictitious...
What do we really know of the 'Afro-Europeans' (Afro-French)? What reading do we have of them, of their expressions?... So many questions that have led us to design with a lot of humor and love this first act... The Act is built around the SAPE (Société des Ambianceurs et of elegant people) and the character of SAPPER because it is one of the anchorage points of the Coupé-décalé.

In the Act 2 "will spoil the corner!", I wanted to stage of real dancers of Coupé-décalé using their own code sign, dress, language... My travels and research on the social dances of the Afro-descendants have made me discover the eminently political meaning of all these dances...
The video images are from reality. They were filmed in Abidjan. They were later "recreated", abstractly and matched with the choreographic scenes. These images evoke the urban world, the maquis, glo glo (slums), colonial history... as many texts hidden that we discover in Coupé-décalé and the video image convenes metaphorically... » James Carles