2025 Camping Asia: Loïe Fuller: Research

9.8 (Mon) 12:00 TPAC Member pre-sale
9.15 (Mon) 12:00 Tickets can be purchased

Loïe Fuller: Research, choreographer and dancer Ola Maciejewska’s first solo performance that premiered in 2011, with which she gained international recognition for her ongoing research on the serpentine dances invented by Loïe Fuller. The solo is neither a historical reconstruction nor a homage, but a work that reimagines, reappropriates, deconstructs, and moves through layers of collective memory to activate reflection on how we look at dance history today. As a result, she invites new narratives around this spectacular dance icon to emerge, where a space for one’s own dance history is being created.

The performance reveals the metamorphic aspects of the actual ‘dancing dress’ for the serpentine dances, a unique ‘dancing object’ – a sculptural construction consisting of textile, bamboo sticks, sound, air, and the centrifugal force of the body in an active loop. Maciejewska’s attraction for the archival, very material and dance historical references is intertwined with the open-ended, hidden, and abstract aspects of the serpentine dances. Timeless yet contemporary, by uniting the concrete of a gesture in dialogue with its abstract counterpart the work plays with what is given to be seen.

Dancing Loïe Fuller: Research herself since its creation, Ola Maciejewska passed the solo to Jean Lesca, as a way to open a new cycle on transmission, creation of contemporary dance repertory and a choreographic writing as type of engagemnet that involves duration.

〔Choreographer - Ola Maciejewska〕

Choreographer and dancer, born in Poland and based in France. Her work focuses on the frictions between materiality and ephemerality, movement and its conditions of appearance. In light of these questions, she produces a critical reading of the history of dance. Working on the convergences between dance and the visual arts, her series of works focusing on the serpentine dances invented by Loie Fuller engages the viewer in a reflection on metamorphosis, the natural world, and the hybrid nature of embodiment. Her works have been presented at the Ménagerie de verre, at the Center National de la Danse - Pantin, Center Chorégraphique National - Montpellier, Center Pompidou –Paris, Malaga, Kanal, Festival d’Automne in Paris, National Center for Contemporary Dance - Angers, Mercat de les Flors - Barcelona, ​​at the ADC - Geneva, Charleroi Danse, at the London Royal Opera House, M+ Museum - Hong Kong, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, National Taichung Theater - Taiwan, Guggenheim Museum- Bilbao, Musée d'Orsay - Paris, 14th Lyon Biennale, Zamek Ujazdowski - Warsaw, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves- Porto, Museo Reina Sofia - Madrid, Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Kaaitheater - Brussels, Festival ImPulsTanz, Festival TANZ im August, Teatro Comandini - Cesana, and the Watermill Center founded by Robert Wilson, among others. Between 2016 and 2018, she was an associate artist at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen Normandie. The two pieces Bombyx Mori (2015) and Dance Concert (2018) were part of the New Settings program of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. In 2020, she received a grant from Tanzmesse NRW to research Rolf Borzik’s scenography at the Pina Bausch Foundation archives. In 2022, Ola Maciejewska received a fellowship from the Watermill Center founded by Robert Wilson, and was an associate artist for the project Campement artistique pour littoral, as part of the Mondes Nouveaux program by the French Ministry of Culture. The same year FIGURY (przestrzenne), which premiered at the CNDC Angers, received the Gallery Prize from the Nadežda Petrović Gallery in Cacak (Serbia), which will lead to a solo exhibition. In 2023, she created On Time, a performance-installation for students of the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, and a solo The Second Body that premiered at the Ménagerie de Verre in Paris. She also teaches, and worked as a guest artist at HEAD – École Supérieure d’Art et de Design in Geneva, at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Limoges, at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, and during Camping initiated by the Centre National de la Danse, in Pantin - a framework that brings together educational programs from around the world. The new choreographic piece ONGOING will be premiered in 2026 at the Théâtre Mac Orlan as part of the DañsFabrik Festival by Quartz Brest in France. so we might as well dance - structure dedicated to the production of choreographic projects founded by Ola Maciejewska in 2016, has been subsidised by the French Ministry of Culture - Drac Bretagne, as part of the structuring framework, since 2022.

〔Dancer - Jean Lesca〕

Initially trained in classical dance, he studied contemporary dance at the CNDC in Angers (2016-18) and performance at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels (2018-20), then choreography at the Exerce - CCN master's programme in Montpellier (2023-2025).

As an artist (author or collaborator), he gravitates towards choreographic, textual and textile works that draw on the eroticism and intimacy of everyday objects. He has been working as a choreographic performer with Ola Maciejewska for several years, and is notably a dancer in the pieces Loie Fuller: Research, Bombyx Mori, and Ongoing, Ola Maciejeswska's next creation (premiering in March 2026).