ANTOINE PIERRE

Pic (c) Alice Khol

KINTSUGI​ : Dance & Drums

Kintsugi is the latest creation by choreographer Isabella Soupart, born from an innovative collaboration with drummer-composer and producer Antoine Pierre/VAAGUE and dancer Elsa Tagawa.

Kintsugi is an ancient Japanese art of repairing broken objects by highlighting the cracks with gold, transforming the item into something even more beautiful than before. It’s an ode to imperfection and fragility. Drawing on this philosophy, Soupart’s new production explores the aesthetics of asymmetry, chaos, and the beauty of flaws.

Inspired by the graphic novel Furari, the piece translates the codes of manga into eleven dynamic sequences where dramatic poses and explosive actions shape the choreographic language. The dancer navigates between control, falls, and resistance, embodying both strength and vulnerability through a vocabulary that oscillates between rupture and restoration.

The music composition reflects this dramaturgy through a subtle fusion of breakbeats and acoustic drums, crafting an immersive soundscape. Slow and hypnotic, the music suddenly accelerates with the pulse of drum machines, building tension between minimalism and sonic eruption. With sensors fixed to the drum kit, each strike triggers samples mapped to different zones of the instrument, turning it into a kind of interactive controller.

To enrich this sonic palette, the composer draws from percussive sounds of everyday objects— falling water droplets, struck wood, stone on concrete, human voices—resulting in raw textures that blend improvisation and structure. These elements foster a lively, real-time dialogue between movement and sound.

Costumes, hairstyles, and uniforms echo Japanese pop culture, while the minimalist set design reveals technical elements—cables, microphones, mixing desk—which extend and reflect the choreographic gesture. Mobility and transformation thus become integral to the performance itself.

Production Made in Bruxelles / Cie Isabella Soupart

Co-production: Festival Artonov, Fondation blan, Aubergine Artist Management, Galerie Quai4, New Space (Liège) Supported by: Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB)

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Picture (c) Bruno Sacré