IL FAUX by Brazili­an cho­reo­graph­er Calixto Neto reflects on the idea of dis­pos­ses­sion and a body under the threat of erasure. 

In his essay Between the world and me, Afric­an-Amer­ic­an author Ta-Nehisi Coates devel­ops the idea that the black man in the USA lives in con­stant fear of los­ing his body to police viol­ence, street viol­ence or by renoun­cing his his­tory and his roots. This Nation­al Book Award 2015 recip­i­ent essay which was trans­lated in many lan­guages world­wide inspired Calixto Neto to won­der: which forces have the power to erase a body? Can we name, identi­fy and ques­tion these forces? When a body is ali­en­ated, who or what does it belong to? As an answer, the Brazili­an cho­reo­graph­er ima­gines the way an ali­en­ated body could move, how it could express itself, and which affects move it. IL FAUX is a solo about the risk of los­ing one’s body, danced by someone who is exper­i­en­cing that risk, who’s alive and able to embody a dis­pos­sessed body. The cho­reo­graphy works on dodging and dis­tan­cing, the aware­ness of being a mov­ing tar­get, and the idea that the body is per­meated by forces it’s not respons­ible for. The cho­reo­graph­er also uses verbal lan­guage, par­tic­u­larly through vent­ri­lo­quism, since a speak­ing body who can­not be iden­ti­fied as the speak­er can open new pos­sib­il­it­ies for discussion.