Alliance of International Production Houses

Shadowboxing is a piece featuring Frédéric Gies, DJ Fiedel, and the audience. The piece regards club dancing as a vast territory of movement and poetic experimentation. The sheer dancing around in the club crystalises into a special form of dance over the course of the evening. Various bodies and images take shape through the way dance and music are interwoven in club spaces. On stage, Gies’ body becomes a channel for other characters, creatures, and beings that temporarily inhabit the dancefloor.

Techno music has been a central element in Frédéric Gies’ works since 2014 and his encounter with techno DJ and producer Fiedel. Many of the works refer to clubs and raves, be that in the dance itself or in the collective experience to which Gies invites the audience. The practice of technosomatics, developed over the last years and so dubbed by Gies himself, is a practice that connects the physical experiences with club dance. Frédéric Gies’ dance pieces alternate between clockwork composition and great intensity. Gies is interested in the chaos that dancing bodies emanate that give themselves over to their innermost desires and powers. Frédéric Gies perceives dance as a possibility, not as an obligation. So, he connects his classical ballet education and his encounters with certain trends of contemporary dance at the onset of the 90s with his personal experiences in techno clubs and at raves as well as with his analysis of bodily practice.

Duration: 60 min.

Choreography and Performance: Frédéric Gies
Music: Fiedel
Light Design: Thomas Zamolo
Costumes: Grzegorz Matlag