Kata

French choreographer Anne Nguyen makes her debut at the Holland Festival with Kata, a dance show that combines hip-hop with martial arts. In Kata,Nguyen deconstructs the basic moves of breakdance and gives these a completely new meaning:

the eight breakdancers become the embodiment of a long-gone warrior ideal, and the tenacity of their dancing comes to represent both a moral and spiritual outlook on life. Nguyen perceives breakdance, in fact, as a contemporary form of martial art which came into being as a creative weapon against the hostility and dangers of the big city. Kata shows the eight dancers in combat against imaginary opponents, present only in the dance steps, and uses both martial arts and breakdance movements to convey this. We see how the practice of their art enables the dancers to develop their inner selves, increase their vital energies, and attain harmony with their environment. They are transformed into modern samurai, bound by an ancient code of honour, however absurd that may seem in modern life. Nguyen says that in our daily lives we are rarely confronted with situations in which people really fight with each other. ‘But the fighting spirit, given form by breakdance, can be used to help us resist an environment of oppression and a decadent contemporary lifestyle which have disturbed our relationship with the Earth and with the animal world. Hip-hop and breakdance are forms of discipline and ritual. They help us to renew our contact with our deepest instincts.’

Kata is Nguyen’s tenth production with her dance company, Compagnie par Terre. Since her debut solo Square Root (2005) she has concentrated on fusing the raw, technically demanding moves of hip-hop dance with an extremely expressive, raw choreography. Her work is typified by precise gestures and movements, the use of mathematical and biomechanical principles, the constraints of geometry, contrasts between openness and density, the interweaving of bodies and an unexpected use of space. All these enable her to create a layered architecture of movement. Many of the works she has choreographed, such as Yonder Woman (2010) and bal.exe (2014), revolve around a contrast between carefully controlled images and free space, in which exciting improvisations are made possible. Nguyen also creates hybrid art projects which search for a new relationship between dance and spectators. Danse des guerriers de la ville (2016) (Dance of the city warriors), for example, which can also be seen at this year’s Holland Festival, is a multimedia installation that combines audience participation, video art and virtual reality with hip-hop.

In the martial arts tradition the word ‘kata’ refers to an established set of self-defence techniques in which the combat is with imaginary opponents. The movements are often not immediately recognizable but have hidden meanings. Through endless repetition they become second nature and are transformed into practical combat reflexes. Traditionally every single move in a ‘kata’ has a specific function, while in breakdance individual moves are often subordinated to the over-arching expressive effect. Nguyen was confronted by this difference in her own martial arts training. Her teacher felt she should choose between capoeira or breakdance, because she was improvising her fights, using too many weak or pointless moves. Nguyen says that in Kata she is now doing exactly the opposite: ‘I take a dance form like breakdance, composed from a sequence of apparently pointless moves, and I give each movement a function again, as if each sequence really were a kata from martial arts.’ In the show Nguyen decomposes the centrifugal dance patterns of breakdance into separate series of isolated movements, and then gives each of these a new application: as a fighting technique, or as a way of entering into a relationship with another dancer.

To the rhythms of the original soundtrack by Sébastien Lété, and supported by a subtle lighting design by Ydir Acef, the eight breakdancers systematically move across the stage, individually or in strictly controlled dance formations, following carefully designed interweaving patterns. Slowly the meaning of these separate choreographic phrases becomes apparent. As the dancers draw closer to each other, their gestures develop into mosaic-like forms, creating complex fight scenes that arise amid attack and defence moves, in the ducking and diving. And so form is given to the elusive but warrior-like energy of the breakdance.