'Cherepaka' dance and contortionism inspired by the paintings of Francis Bacon

A turtle is both shell and flesh: a shell that endures and flesh that decays over time. This duality also haunts mankind as a tension between a sense of eternity and the decay of animal flesh. That is the subject of Cherepaka: a performance that lies somewhere between dance, contortionism and new circus arts and whose approach, according to its creator and interpreter, Quebec native Andréane Leclerc, is inspired by the paintings of  Francis Bacon and the essay Logic of Sensation by Gilles Deleuze.

Andréane Leclerc’s career began when she joined the National Circus School of Montreal at the age of nine. She began touring with different circus companies when she was 17; contortionism was already her favoured means of expression. In her work, Leclerc attempts to go beyond the limitations of the body and the conception that we have of the body. Since 2006 she has directed and performed in a number of works, including Et pourquoi pas! and InSuccube. A few years ago she founded her own company, Nadère Arts Vivants, which, as she explains, has the mission to create, produce and present, locally and internationally, experimental stage works characterized by a strong thought proces, printing them a distorted view of reality that surrounds us.

Cherepaka was first presented at the Contemporary Circus Festival in Chicago in January 2014. Just a few months later it appeared in Barcelona at Mercat de les Flors. Leclerc’s poetic and philosophical extreme contortionism can now be seen at Sala Hiroshima.