Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust. DRESSING + mata !

With DRESSING and mata! presented as a double bill at Bozar, Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust’s work resonates at Bozar with the exhibition Edith Dekyndt X Cristóbal Balanciaga. 

DRESSING  

DRESSING is a performance that starts from the act of dressing. Getting dressed is a paradoxical daily gesture: depending on the individual, it aims as much to assimilate into a social group as to distinguish oneself from it. The costume is a support which allows both to merge, even to camouflage oneself in the mass, and to stand out: two ways of presenting oneself to others, which are based on an issue of collective belonging. DRESSING features bodies that use clothing and accessories in order to appear differently, to distinguish themselves from others and from the decor. Clothing becomes a ritual of transformation, allowing the creation of a new identity. The costume is considered as a choreographic score, in its capacity to offer a renewed way of moving, of expressing oneself, of performing. Silhouettes are constructed and deconstructed, revealing before our eyes creatures in constant metamorphosis, to the point of monstrousness. 

mata! 

What form would a bullfight take, removed from the reality of killing, defeating gender stereotypes and the codes of ritual violence? In the center of the arena, bathed in the musical atmosphere of Paul Lajus, Grégoire Schaller and Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust deliver a critical rereading of this sacrificial parade by exacerbating the elegance of its pageantry. Through the reappropriation of gestures, light clothing and grimaces, the ultimate expressions of an encounter with death, the duo organizes a face-to-face which focuses on the bodily metamorphoses of the matador’s face. Reinterpreting her in the guise of the drag king, both relax as they seduce each other, engaged in a circular choreography which plays on a disorder instilled in the genre. The result of research carried out in the field, in bullfighting schools, breeding sites and at a tailor between the South of France and Madrid, mata! makes shifts at the heart of this aesthetic-political node to think about bullfighting beyond the show. 

Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust is a Franco-Iranian-German-Polish artist. He develops a cross-disciplinary practice combining visual arts, textiles, performance and choreography. His works—patchworks, kilts, felts, costumes—question notions of exile, memory and identity through a living, shifting textile material, a vector of transformation. The costume becomes a site of metamorphosis, where bodies are distorted to invent new narratives. Inspired by Persian arts, family archives or archaeological objects, he reassembles a fragmented memory and creates imagined landscapes populated by hybrid entities. 

DRESSING – Credits 
Concept: Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust 
Performed by: Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust, Hélio Hoarau, Mallaury Scala, Grégoire Schaller 
Costume design: Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust 
Wigs in collaboration with Rozy Sapelkine 
Leather accessories in collaboration with Sarah Belfer 
Costumes in collaboration with Constance Tabourga 
Choreographic eye: Lynda Rahal 
Outside eye: Maureen Béguin-Morin 
Sound composition: Paul Lajus 
Production supported by Wiels (BE), 3BisF (FR) 
Duration: 30 minutes 

mata! – Credits 
Concept: Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust and Grégoire Schaller
Performed by: Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust and Grégoire Schaller 
Dramaturgical advice: Lynda Rahal 
Sound composition: Paul Lajus
Lighting design: Gabrielle Maire 
Co-production: Ballet de Lorraine (Nancy), Festival Actoral (Marseille), KLAP Maison pour la Danse (Marseille) 
Production support: CCN de Caen
Duration: 50 minutes