Ana Rita Teodoro

As a phenomenon anchored in culture and Japanese representations, kawaii is a genuine lifestyle, whose semantic field covers ideas of vulnerability and fragility – in people, images or objects considered as being adorable. Cute in English, mi-mi in French, fofo in Portuguese, it is possible to find almost everywhere these codes linked to a childish world, full of colours, smiling characters and round, reassuring forms. Intrigued by the ambivalence in this relationship with the world, the choreographer Ana Rita Teodoro examined the physical and political questions raised by the kawaii aesthetic and lifestyle. Should it be seen as a symbol of regressive consumerism, or as a “soft power”, a eulogy of gentleness, slowness and sensitivity?
As an extension of the world of the “cute”, she has sought out traces of it in the history of art, but also in the subjective coordinates of the adolescent body. Using softness, roundness, passivity or hyper-sensibility as choreographic principles, a group of four dancers examines the frontier between childhood and adulthood, and fashions the image of a developing, malleable and porous body.