BIOGRAPHY
Louis-Kantigui (kanti) occasionally felt that dance, especially breaking, had quite a special place within the art world. This discipline is unique and fascinating yet elusive. It may be due to a lack of tangible productions. Dance could be defined as art, entertainment, sport or all at once.
As Frédéric Pouillaude writes: “Dance vanishes in the instant it is given and leaves barely no trace.” Living art involves shows, choreographies, videos and Laban and Benesh movement notations, yes, but what about visual artworks?
Inspired by the Gutai (Kazuo Shiraga), the Action Painting (Jackson Pollock), Fabienne Verdier’s calligraphies or Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Violin Phase, Louis-Kantigui (kanti) seeks to capture the imprint and energy of breaking movements.
Louis-Kantigui (kanti)’s preferred steps are recognizable by very fast motions of the legs (called footworks). So much so that the shoes were often leaving marks on the floor while he was dancing. Interested by the forms of those marks, he came up with an idea: utilizing the body in motion as a drawing tool. Mop-slippers soaked in ink and attached to the shoes serve as a brush, enabling him to capture the energy of the mouvements across large surfaces. In other words, he creates movement-made artworks, not that dissimilar from Zen painting. It all results in a graphic system, a sort of alphabet.
CV
STATEMENT
Art maps the energy of movements.
