HYBRIDITY is the third part of a work cycle in which the ensemble around the choreographer Rafaële Giovanola has developed different scenarios that show our human body exposed in a radically changing world. As in the previous successful pieces “Momentum” and “Vis Motrix”, the CocoonDance Company once again draws inspiration from external body techniques in its search for the still ‘unthought’ body.

The starting point is the encounter and blending of two very different cultures of movement: Thai boxing on the one hand, which has been practiced in Thailand for centuries, and, on the other hand, the romantic ballet of the early 20th century. Both forms of movement are part of the cultural heritage, still influencing the traditional body images in Asia and Central Europe. They could hardly be more contrary. On the one side the choreographic ideal of the immaterial, ethereal body, on the other side a full-contact martial sport.

In order to be able to study the material as authentically as possible, several work phases took place in collaboration with Isabelle Fokine, the granddaughter of Michail Fokine and manager of the Fokine Estate Archive, who advises ballet companies worldwide on rehearsing the choreographies, as well as with Priest West, a German kickboxer and former World and European Muay Thai champion.

For a strategy of hybridity, it is necessary to unite something that was not previously connected, neither spatially nor temporally.

For the present project, it offers us the opportunity to generate new forms of embodiment through the fusion of two opposing body techniques, such as ballet and Thai boxing, and to contribute to an expansion of our definition of the body. Such a method does not draw on traditional body images, nor on a social construction of body and gender.