A jewel of movement
Since her early days as a student at the Centre Irène Popard in Paris, where she learnt contemporary dance, ballet, eurhythmics, music, anatomy, movement analysis and Irène Popard’s dance method, Lodie Kardouss has made artistic creativity become her way of life. Choreographer, dancer and jewelry designer, she’s always looking for a way to improve, for new boundaries to better herself. Her training in contemporary dance includes studies at Les rencontres internationales de danse contemporaine (R.I.D.C.), Junior Ballet d’Aquitaine in Bordeaux and the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s contemporary dance school in Brussels. She also founded along with other dance professionals the UNIKvzw in order to propose classes and workshops open to amateurs and professionals. Lodie Kardouss dances around the world sharing her beautiful talent in order to understand and communicate.
“Wild, busy and a restless person” is the way you describe yourself. Where does that wildness come from and where does it take you?
Let's say that's written on my facebook profile... it probably reflected a state of mind at the time when I opened my profile... I would say I'm still wild, busy and restless, but I feel that I don't have to shout it out to the world. I guess at that time I was a bit extravagant and maybe that's the kind of thing that I could have said to introduce myself... now I guess it's enough for me to know it for myself.
What do you need to shout to the world right now?
That's the point, I think to want to shout out something to the world is a kind of desperate way to say that you exist by wanting/forcing people to listen to you, I guess now I figured that if you whisper people are actually going to get closer to you, to listen carefully to what you have to say.
And you chose the movement as your artistic language. What does it move you to dance?
I chose movement as a language by working as a dancer, but I must say that there is a shift operating now in the way of expressing myself, I use to be expressing myself through my body, or with the body as a media, and now I’ve started jewelry courses and I find a lot of interest in expressing myself through a material. It involves another kind of physicality in jewelry making. The physicality of your body, filing, hammering, cutting, from very rough quality to something very precise and the physicality of the object itself that you create, from inventing it from scratch to giving it its final shape. So I guess now it's just a step in my dance world to go through the jewelry making!
How do you think that new artistic adventure will influence your work as a dancer?
I don't know how because I don't know the future, but I'm sure it will bring something at one point or another in some way or another. I guess the more you learn, the more it makes you able to see the connections between elements. Let's say that the goal is not to predict connections that I could do, the goal is actually to know more deeply another discipline and to be truthful in the act of learning. From there on, all connections will be possible in between those two disciplines because I will know how they work individually.
Do you think you know yourself and your boundaries?
I know some things about myself because at one point, experience makes you register elements in your data base, but for the rest, for what's going to come next.... well I don't know, i can only try to deal with future with my past life. Concerning my boundaries, I guess I spend a lot of time trying to know them, and by the time I find them I also realise that I want to cross them.
And will you?
Surely, I have an entire life it, it's not a matter of being all time active at pushing your limits, I would rather be slow but good at it!
Your first choreography was Sans notice in 2006 in which you were also the solo performer. When you perform your own choreographies, are you more demanding with yourself?
I' m all the time very demanding with myself, whatever it is what i have to do, if it's for me of the others.
And how do you remember your first time as a choreographer?
I don't really remember a precise thing except that when I was younger I was writing choreographies in my room!! More seriously, I think I alternate from being a dancer to a choreographer and vice versa, so it's not that I change my life and I become somebody different when I do one or the other, it's just the challenges that are different.
Which one is your biggest challenge in life?
Tricky! I don't know... to be happy maybe.
And do you know what it means to be happy?
To know what it means would be maybe pretentious, but I can say that I recognize it when it's how it feels.
Touché. Returning to your career, you combine your own choreographies with your work as a dancer for others choreographies and your work as a dance teacher. They are almost opposite experiences, in one hand to perform directed by another artist and in the other hand to teach other people to dance. What about all those experiences?
Those two experiences are not so far from each other, in one way when you work for a choreographer you translate what he or she means by interpreting it through your understanding and then through your body and movements, and when you teach there is also the idea of translating your ideas or what you think about something to the others. Teaching also requires a lot of understanding of oneself and of the others. At the end for me it's always the same interest: understanding and communicating.
That understanding and communication could be also a way to connect with your mind, your inner being, through your movement and other artistic activities or is more the way to let your mind express itself?
There s nothing mystical about all of that, i have a great interest in understanding myself and the others and communicating what i think in clear words and making my words match my mind.
Don't you have a spiritual vision of existence?
Everything is spiritual and in the same time isn't spiritual, so no, I have no specific spiritual vision of existence, only from time to time I like thinking life like something more spiritual than consumption, finances, petroleum, production, economics and else.
Talking about arts and economics, you’ve performed in cities like Brussels, Berlin, London, Paris, Lyon, Lille, Bucharest,, Krakow... including impressive scenarios like De Munt / La Monnaie in Brussels. How do you see European dance current situation?
Seriously I don't know about that, there are lots of things happening everywhere, lately I have to say that I haven't been all the time enthusiastic about what I’ve seen, but as I said, there s lots of things happening and I don't know everything.
But do you think it's easy for an European artist to show his work in any country of the EU?
That for sure no.
Why do you think that European artistic circuit, so necessary, doesn't exist?
There is an European artistic network, it's just that not everybody can be part of it. It's all about money baby!
I guess collaboration is very important in art in order to join forces and experiences. You collaborated in the film La caravane des dix mots directed by Olivier Conrardy in 2006 creating a choreography performed by yourself in the film. We all know the Wim Vandekeybus / Ultima vez films and the recent success of Pina by Wim Wenders. What do you think about combining dance and cinema?
I think that dance is an art form itself, cinema as well, and to put those two forms together, requires to know how to build bridges between them two and in order to avoid just putting a good dancer with a good movie maker, it's what s going to be the space in between them that s going to be interesting, not a juxtaposition of what they re both good at.
What can dance give to cinema and viceversa?
I’ll tell you if I work on one again.
I could enjoy your solo performance in Slow Down at Mica Moca in Berlin. How can a restless person slow down?
By practicing!
I think MICA MOCA closed some months ago, the future of arts worries you?
There so much to worry about those days... anyway Mica Moca closed down because they only had a 6 months contract with the owner of the place, so it's already miraculous that this place could open in the first place. That's to mention a friend of mine who was one of leader of the team!
Your latest work is as a performer in the Annie Vigier & Franck Apertet’s company Les gens d’Uterpan. What is the Home Clubbing?
Home Clubbing is a performance that we made last for 3 hours the last time. It’s about being in complete motion always, like a seaweed in the water. It’s a very soft and continuous motion that never stops, never ends and that can go forever... well 3 hours was kind of intense.
Could you describe me your present time in some movements?
A thumb up.
And could you dance me the future?
I would prefer to dance the present always!
An interview by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo by Lara Herbina. All rights reserved