Albertine Dance Season 2023 Shadows Cast by Raphaëlle Boitel
Cie L'oublié(e)
March 23 - April 6, 2023
Acrobatic theater and dance show, Shadows Cast, or in French, Ombres Portées, will be on tour in three cities: Montclair, New Jersey, Boston, Massachusetts, and Easton, Pennsylvania
Raphaëlle Boitel began her career as a young girl when she and her family ran away to join the circus. A mesmerizing contortionist and aerialist, Ben Brantley of the New York Times first noticed her in 2008, calling her performance “truly ravishing.” When she premiered her show When Angels Fall in Boston in 2019, it became a word-of-mouth sensation, with audiences spellbound and jaws dropped as her surreal, beautiful world darkly bloomed on stage. Now Boitel returns with a brand new vision, exploring the human psyche with Shadows Cast (Ombres Portées) with her group, Compagnie L’oubliée.
A visually cinematic take on the ghosts hiding in the shadows of our families and selves, Raphaëlle Boitel’s latest choreographic and acrobatic work plunges us into the heart of the unsaid. At the crossroads of circus, dance, and theatre, Shadows Cast surrounds K, an energetic but wounded young woman looking for answers, and on a Kafkian quest for identity among numerous members of her family. A vivid physical exploration of trauma, courage, and the volatility of our senses of balance and self, Ombres Portées takes inspiration from film endings including those of Requiem for a Dream, Brazil, Festen, and Parasite, and the bodies of work of Fritz Lang, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
With extraordinarily fluid body movement, evocative visual style, and dramatic spatial sense, Boitel tells emotional, moving stories shaped by darkness and light. Soaring, gliding, diving, dancing, catapulting into the sky, Compagnie l’Oubliée’s performers create cinematic visions with high-flying elements of circus craft.
The performances of Shadows Cast are part of the 2023 Dance Season and are supported by FACE Contemporary Theater, a program of Villa Albertine and FACE Foundation
Venues:
Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey | March 23 – 26
Emerson Paramount Center, Boston, Massachusetts | March 30 – April 2
Williams Center for the Arts, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania | April 6
