©Pierre Planchenault
COLLECTIVE OUINCH OUINCH
The collective was created in 2018 with Karine Dahouindji, Marius Barthaux, Klaire-Alice Crettol and Nicolas Fernando Mayorga Ramirez as founding members. The artistic vision is currently in the hands of Karine Dahouindji and Marius Barthaux. In our creations and as a collective, we try to adopt a horizontal process, with no fixed decision-maker, alternating leads, which doesn't prevent us from creating quickly and spontaneously, while remaining open and constantly questioning our work. In this way, we develop a fun, process-based approach to collective, cross-disciplinary, in situ and immersive creations.
THE WAY WE DANCE
Above all, the way we dance proclaims the intense joys of life, which is why we see this as a social vehicle at every level. It creates links - between ourselves, with the audience, with the animals and plants present, with the space and visible matter that surrounds us, and with the invisible things that surround us too: the energies of the air, the sun and the moon, the chthonic energies of the centre of the Earth, the distant, the forces of the past and the future brought back to the present.
The collective was created in 2018 with Karine Dahouindji, Marius Barthaux, Klaire-Alice Crettol and Nicolas Fernando Mayorga Ramirez as founding members. The artistic vision is currently in the hands of Karine Dahouindji and Marius Barthaux. In our creations and as a collective, we try to adopt a horizontal process, with no fixed decision-maker, alternating leads, which doesn't prevent us from creating quickly and spontaneously, while remaining open and constantly questioning our work. In this way, we develop a fun, process-based approach to collective, cross-disciplinary, in situ and immersive creations.
THE WAY WE DANCE
Above all, the way we dance proclaims the intense joys of life, which is why we see this as a social vehicle at every level. It creates links - between ourselves, with the audience, with the animals and plants present, with the space and visible matter that surrounds us, and with the invisible things that surround us too: the energies of the air, the sun and the moon, the chthonic energies of the centre of the Earth, the distant, the forces of the past and the future brought back to the present.
©Pierre Planchenault
SET IN SPACE
We see our shows as attempts to converse with reality. We try to combine raw, musical, sensitive, festive and spectacular choreography with the design of spatial installations that allow us to link the body in movement with the environment in which it operates. So we sometimes focus more on the performers' relationship with the audience, and sometimes more on the space in its more global, visual and acoustic aspects.
AESTHETIC PROCESS
We invent, and wish to invent again and again, queer expressionist fictional content saturated with symbolism, in which set design, costumes and character work mix references from different eras, whether primitive, medieval or futuristic. At the same time, we reject the fourth wall, and advocate a sensitive, intense and attentive presence to reality.
We see our shows as attempts to converse with reality. We try to combine raw, musical, sensitive, festive and spectacular choreography with the design of spatial installations that allow us to link the body in movement with the environment in which it operates. So we sometimes focus more on the performers' relationship with the audience, and sometimes more on the space in its more global, visual and acoustic aspects.
AESTHETIC PROCESS
We invent, and wish to invent again and again, queer expressionist fictional content saturated with symbolism, in which set design, costumes and character work mix references from different eras, whether primitive, medieval or futuristic. At the same time, we reject the fourth wall, and advocate a sensitive, intense and attentive presence to reality.
©Pierre Planchenault
OUINCH PRESENCE
The ouinch presence is a buffoonish & maliciously presence, explicitly expressive and on the lookout. Our characters' psychology is worn on the outsiden of our bodies, on our expressive, sometimes disfigured, faces. It's intimate and personal, charged from within, but transmitted directly from the brain to the skin, in contact with the outside world. It's a raw presence that's all fired up.
BEING A GROUP
We work a lot by copying and encouraging each other. We work on spontaneity. We work with joy and playfulness. We work on constructing images that propose something other than the dominant point of view. We work to build images that serve causes close to our hearts: feminism, anti-racism and LGBTQIA+ content. We want to create images of what it's like to be an ally, thereby enriching this visual lexical field. We are aware of our responsibility as image-makers.
The ouinch presence is a buffoonish & maliciously presence, explicitly expressive and on the lookout. Our characters' psychology is worn on the outsiden of our bodies, on our expressive, sometimes disfigured, faces. It's intimate and personal, charged from within, but transmitted directly from the brain to the skin, in contact with the outside world. It's a raw presence that's all fired up.
BEING A GROUP
We work a lot by copying and encouraging each other. We work on spontaneity. We work with joy and playfulness. We work on constructing images that propose something other than the dominant point of view. We work to build images that serve causes close to our hearts: feminism, anti-racism and LGBTQIA+ content. We want to create images of what it's like to be an ally, thereby enriching this visual lexical field. We are aware of our responsibility as image-makers.
©Pierre Planchenault
WHAT IS A OUINCH?
We act as ouinch. The ouinch are little fashion fairy-sorceresses, mischievous, ridiculous and seductive, direct descendants of the korrigans and taking up their mission of seducing humans lost on the moor to take them on their nocturnal rounds until they collapse at dawn, exhausted. Our aim is to infect the audience with dance, as we ourselves are already possessed by the music played by the ouinch Mulah (and sometimes Habiboo) on her incandescent turntables. We demand, mischievously and seductively, that the audience be as invested in their bodies as we are when they attend our shows. We want to awaken in them an irrepressible desire for movement.
To achieve this, we need an immersive experience, because our strategy involves addressing the audience directly with our eyes and bodies. We look at the audience as much as they look at us, and that's how we combine our strengths. We act as mediums, channelling the music we hear into our bodies and transmitting it simultaneously, eye-to-eye, to the audience. It's by looking at people and communicating our joy of dancing that we end up convincing them to dance as well.
We act as ouinch. The ouinch are little fashion fairy-sorceresses, mischievous, ridiculous and seductive, direct descendants of the korrigans and taking up their mission of seducing humans lost on the moor to take them on their nocturnal rounds until they collapse at dawn, exhausted. Our aim is to infect the audience with dance, as we ourselves are already possessed by the music played by the ouinch Mulah (and sometimes Habiboo) on her incandescent turntables. We demand, mischievously and seductively, that the audience be as invested in their bodies as we are when they attend our shows. We want to awaken in them an irrepressible desire for movement.
To achieve this, we need an immersive experience, because our strategy involves addressing the audience directly with our eyes and bodies. We look at the audience as much as they look at us, and that's how we combine our strengths. We act as mediums, channelling the music we hear into our bodies and transmitting it simultaneously, eye-to-eye, to the audience. It's by looking at people and communicating our joy of dancing that we end up convincing them to dance as well.
THE COLLECTIVE
Marius Barthaux
©Jennifer Schaerler
Marius Barthaux's work is processual and joyful, based on collective, transdisciplinary, in situ and immersive creation. The shows he creates or co-creates are often attempts at a conversation with reality, focusing on the relationship between artists, audiences and the materiality of the space involved. After training in dramatic arts at conservatoires in Paris, he joined La Manufacture in 2015 for the Bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance. In 2021, to deepen his knowledge of the subject, he will take the Dance and Landscape course at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paysagiste de Versailles. Since 2016, he and the Paris-based collective La Grosse Plateforme have been creating shows for 12 bodies and 12 voices. They use the public space as a raw, dancing choir to inhabit and resonate in different types of places (squares, museums, bridges, etc.). With OUINCH OUINCH, the Geneva-based company he holds the vision for with Karine Dahouindji, they use their shows to take over open or enclosed spaces in which audiences and performers mingle, bringing with them festivity, carnival, the grotesque and dance in total immersion. More personally, over the last three years he has been developing a project of sensory and material experimentation with La Grosse Plateforme, cosmos des sommes, which now includes a solo, dires des sommes (MIMOS 2022), a mineral performance for a stranded acrobat, and an ambulatory group piece, la patrouille (Festival Entre Cour et jardins 2023). He is also a performer-actor-dancer for directors including Fanny de Chaillé (Le Choeur), Antoine Thiollier (Carmen), Nicole Seiler (The Rest is Silence) and Marc Oosterhoff. |
Karine Dahouindji 
©Nadia Tarra
Karine Dahouindji began her dance training at the Conservatoire de Nîmes before joining the CNDC in Angers and then La Manufacture in Lausanne. A graduate since 2018, she has enriched her skills as an interpreter and performer with artists such as Mark Lorimer, Nicole Seiler, Ruth Childs and Maud Blandel. She is also a member of the OUINCH OUINCH collective, of which she holds the artistic vision with Marius Barthaux. Together, they work on how to form a group while asserting strong individuality. It's through festivity, carnival and joy that they express themselves in site-specific forms. Their first creation Happy Hype has been actively touring Switzerland and Europe since 2018, and their second piece Cachalotte was presented at Emergentia in 2022, at Festival Belluard (CH) and Festival FAB (FR) in 2023, and is now still touring. Drawing on her various professional and personal experiences, Karine is developing her first solo as an associate artist at l'Abri-Genève. Supported by the Réseau Grand Luxe, she creates through the various partner venues of this platform and presents her first solo Kâ! Sirène des terres in November 2023, at l'Abri-Genève, as part of Emergentia - temps fort chorégraphes émergents. |