The Ès col­lect­ive is work­ing on a phys­ic­al study of the world­wide hit La Lam­bada with a piece for two tri­os. How do you bring bod­ies togeth­er in the uto­pi­an space of a con­cert hall?

The huge suc­cess of La Lam­bada in 1989, when the fall of the Ber­lin Wall and the tri­umph of a lib­er­al polit­ic­al and eco­nom­ic mod­el paved the way for glob­al­iz­a­tion, is a mark­er and a sym­bol. As it travels around the world, the song is a pla­gi­ar­ized cov­er of an old Bolivi­an tune, and car­ries with it a num­ber of clichés. Its uni­ver­sal­ity is linked to music­al and advert­ising format­ting, which will then be end­lessly adap­ted. The three cho­reo­graph­ers and dan­cers of Col­lec­tif Ès exam­ine the mech­an­ics and issues involved, draw­ing on the rhythm of La Lam­bada to cre­ate a phys­ic­al vocab­u­lary: bod­ies that move towards each oth­er, stick togeth­er and sway, without ever becom­ing part of the song’s aes­thet­ic. This research is also a way of deep­en­ing a long-stand­ing work on the trio form, here doubled to open up the chal­lenges of a group piece: How can these tri­os be inter­de­pend­ent and show the cohab­it­a­tion of sev­er­al indi­vidu­als with­in a group and sev­er­al groups in the same space? To this end, the col­lect­ive is work­ing on a new divi­sion of a stage space where sev­er­al dis­tinct ter­rit­or­ies cohab­it, some­times shared with the audi­ence. It’s a way of restor­ing the uto­pi­an aspect of the aud­it­or­i­um, a pop­u­lar and uni­fy­ing place, just as a music­al hit can be.