ActOral24 I SCENE44 I Samir Kennedy - The Aching

3 October 2024 - 7pm 4 October 2024 - 6pm

The Aching
3 October 2024 - 7pm
4 October 2024 - 6pm
to book:
resa@actoral.org

durée 40 min + film de 20 min l Danse I Grande-Bretagne, Algérie
16€, 12€, 8€

In co-production with SCENE44 . n + n corsino

Performer Samir Kennedy explores in The Aching a form of rituality combining specific bodily expression with performance art and songs from British, Irish and American folklore.
The sound is articulated here both as an emission arising from the artist's body and as an invading element which magically takes possession of him.
Moving on the ground or stuck to the wall, Kennedy brings out a choreography of pain – the word which, in English, gives the name of the performance – that is both heartbreaking and therapeutic. Between silent exchanges with the public and sartorial metamorphoses playing with heteronormative codes, the British-Algerian artist probes the nuances of pain until it becomes the paradoxical vehicle of a long-awaited collective healing. In The Aching, a gripping journey where tenderness and brutality come together, Samir Kennedy speaks, through this cycle of traditional songs, about the human being's capacity to welcome and
heal physical or emotional pain.

REUNION
The performance will be followed by Reunion, a new video work by Samir Kennedy and Jame St Findlay which explores death and misery in all their absurd, horrific and banal manifestations. Brought together by a mutual appreciation of the absurd, the abused, the bastardized and the beautiful, the two artists spent a week imprisoned within the walls of Agora, wandering according to their instincts and guided by its ghosts. The result is an encounter between morbid monsters and miserable men, between several worlds and the fissures that separate them.

Direction, creation and performance: Samir Kennedy
Sound: Samir Kennedy
External perspective: Simon Vincenzi, Sara Manente, Ghyslaine Gau
Visual: ©Sam Coudrais

Production:
For The Aching
With the support of the ICI-CCN Center Chorégraphique National de Montpellier Occitanie, Tanzhaus Zü rich, Battersea Art’s Centre, The Old Diorama
Thanks Simon Vincenzi, Katerina Andreou, Myrto Katsiki, Anne Kezerho, Jean-Daniel Broussé, Ghyslaine Gau, Sara Manente, John Kennedy.
For REUNION
Creation supported by Montpellier Danse, ICI-CCN Montpellier, Arts Council England