Performance

Mark Tompkins

HOMMAGES

Mark Tompkins Witness hommage Harry Sheppard © Jean-Louis Badet
Mark Tompkins Witness hommage Harry Sheppard © Jean-Louis Badet

13 & 14.04.18

CN D Pantin

At a time when revivals are flourishing, exploring and reflecting on different areas of the history of dance, Mark Tompkins’s HOMMAGES, created between 1989 and 1999, offers a different view of some of the key figures. This view is not so much historic and reflexive as intense and joyfully offbeat. What does Mark Tompkins’s body make of these spectres, known to us today mainly through photographs, films and fragments of images? How does he bring the imaginary and these iconic figures together? Valeska Gert, Joséphine Baker and Vaslav Nijinski, as well as Harry Sheppard, a black American dancer who was Mark Tompkins’ mentor: they are above all unique bodies which, through the power of their embodiment, precludes any type of reproduction. To evoke them is to expose oneself to the risk of deviation, approximation, and sacrilege. But exposing oneself is the point of these portraits, where a self-portrait of the dancer as a being embodied emerges. Without seeking to avoid the inferior copy, kitsch, subterfuge, revealing clichés and mythologies, Mark Tompkins reveals a gap that is both a fantasy and a principle of truth. Using all the artifices of cabaret, of disguise, of song, of music, he passes from one body to the other – man or woman, white or black – moved by the pleasure of acting as if: of singing with Joséphine Baker, of making faces with Valeska Gert, of leaping with Nijinsky. As well as being accompanied by these figures, he accompanies us towards them, allowing us to enjoy for a moment this little hole in time.
 

A multi-faceted choreographer, singer and dancer, Mark Tompkins masters different genres and mixes forms in a tireless quest to break down barriers. With the company I.D.A., founded in 1983, he creates unique performances combining music, song, text and video. Created in collaboration with stage designer Jean-Louis Badet, his works veer between concerts, performances, solos and group pieces, such as the musical trilogy BLACK’N’BLUES (2010), OPENING NIGHT (2012) and SHOWTIME (2013). In 2017, he created BAMBI un drame familial, then HOLY ROLLER with and for James Carlès and RESURRECTION in collaboration with Mariana Tengner Barros.

La Valse de Vaslav
Hommage à Nijinski
1989


Choreography
Mark Tompkins
Stage design and costumes
Jean-Louis Badet

Co-production I.D.A. Mark Tompkins, Théâtre 14, the periodical Pour la Danse. Performed for the first time in May 1989, as part of a homage to Nijinsky, Théâtre 14, Paris.

Icons
Hommage à Valeska Gert
1998


Choreography
Mark Tompkins
Stage design and costumes
Jean-Louis Badet

Co-production I.D.A., Centre Chorégraphique National de Tours – Daniel Larrieu.
Performed for the first time on 12 June 1998, for the Festival Le Chorégraphique, CCN de Tours.

Under my skin
Hommage à Joséphine Baker
1996


Conception and direction
Mark Tompkins
Stage design and costumes
Jean-Louis Badet

Co-production I.D.A., Culturgest, Lisbon.
Performed for the first time on 11 January 1996, as part of homage to Joséphine Baker at Culturgest, Lisbon.

Witness
Hommage à Harry Sheppard
1992


Choreography
Harry Sheppard, Mark Tompkins

Co-production I.D.A., Vienna International Dance Festival.
Performed for the first time in August 1992, as part of a homage to Harry Sheppard, ImPulsTanz, Vienna