TARA D'ARQUIAN
About me
"D’Arquian shows astute understanding of the visual power of shape"
Seeing Dance (London)
My artistic vision stems from a childhood in an old factory with art from my grandfather's galleries, featuring artists like Matthieu, Teshigahara, Klimt, Kandinsky, and the Pomodoro brothers. Growing up with architect parents, I found solace in cinema, inspired by directors such as Lynch, Kusturica, and Greenaway.
" My artistic vision stems from a childhood in an old factory with art from my grandfather's galleries, featuring artists [...]."
At 16, I created my first professional choreography, "Utopia of a Life," for a Belgian festival. At 18, I studied contemporary dance at London's Trinity Laban Conservatory, focusing on Choreography and Choreology. As an actress and dancer-choreographer, I learned to integrate local communities into creative processes, shaping my vision of performance as a total work of art.
" I explore human relationships with the visible, invisible, tangible, and magical."
Over 17 years, I've created 16 works, including dance films, site-specific pieces, and stage performances. Driven by curiosity, I explore human relationships with the visible, invisible, tangible, and magical. Through Space and Storytelling, my interconnected works form a cohesive "oeuvre," investigating themes of belonging and human connection.
"Through Space and Storytelling, my interconnected works form a cohesive 'oeuvre,' investigating themes of belonging and human connection."
After a decade of practicing in London, I have returned to Belgium to join L'Escaut Architectures, an architectural firm that combines architectural practice with the hosting of artistic residencies. In parallel, I have formed my own experimental studio, Fields Are Burning Studio.
Body of Works
Abstract Records 3.0
Collaboration with Anita Daulne and Angelo Moutapha to revisit the original Abstract Records with citizens and asylum seekers from Hainaut.
Together with a dancer and three musicians, they created a collective show featuring 60 people from a choir of voices, a choir of voices and movement, and a percussion group made up of residents of the Tournai Red Cross refugee reception center.
Read about it in the press.
Abstract Records 2.0
2nd edition of the original Abstract Records with young people from Liège in collaboration with Cité Miroir and Saneki.
One dancer, three musicians, fifteen young people from the Liège.
Together, they traverse sensory and psychic landscapes in an attempt to retrace a pilgrimage that blends the primitive and the technological.
Abstract Records
A dancer, three musicians and the Opéra de quartier de Molenbeek give birth to a stage performance in which individual memory confronts collective memory through a visceral dance solo, electro-acoustic music and choral singing.
“Can Humanity be synthesized by a finite, material time capsule?
Can the dancing body become a living, evolving vessel to embody our Humanity?”
Sol Media Nocte
(In the middle of the night, the sun)
Immersive site-sensitive performance arising from meeting artists Daniel Schmitz, Jérémy David, François Legrain, Simona Paplauskaité and the voices of Moroccan women and children from Molenbeek.
A court of miracles at the threshold of everyday life.
An immersion in this “court of miracles” or “imaginary land” as an invitation to wonder and (re)discover our inner child.
Can the centre hold
It often happens. That we count our days as if. The act of measurement. Made us some kind of promise. But it happens simultaneously. Without precaution.
Falling into the navigation. Of any single thing. That hangs by a single thread. Perfect your vision of. Fading echos. That fall slightly. Whenever something is missing.
Would it still go if we were. Closer to the centre. Even the walls know it. There is an easier way to leave. And a longer time to wait.
Orphan Realms
Stage piece developed in collaboration with composer Gareth Mitchell.
It delves into the myriad ways one can engage with the present moment.
A woman navigates cyclically through life, her responses shaped by memories she clings to in an effort to maintain a clear sense of self and security.
Bad Faith
"If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company." Sartre
20 years after her mysterious disappearance, Nora (character from Quests), is lost in a place of nothingness encountering uncanny manifestations, materialisations of her inner darkness.
Will Nora, after 20 years of absence, dare to look reality square in the face again?
Cross-disciplinary work, merging dance and poetry, exploring themes of womanhood and loss through a story of self-deception.
A collaboration with poet Jemima Foxtrot.
Under Your Spell
Conceived for La Ducasse at Tournai's Maison de la Culture. Created and performed by Monsieur Lampole and Mademoiselle D'Arquian with live music by Sylvain Bal.
Central to the performance is a wheel of fortune guiding the dance's progression, allowing the performers to explore and improvise within a pre-existing choreography.
This evolving dance incorporates costume changes, varied settings, and diverse visual and auditory atmospheres, creating a constantly metamorphosing spectacle.
Quests
The second site-sensitive performance in a trilogy of work. Following In Situ, Quests returns with set and costume designer Yann Seabra and composers Philippe Lenzini and Bruno Humberto to explore and deconstruct the multiplicity of self and myths of humanity.
Quests transformed Greenwich Dance's home, The Borough Hall, into multiple worlds in which temporalities and places coexisted.
Drunk for the last time 2.0
Seven years after the first performance of Drunk For The Last Time, Tara calls Maxime to ask him to remount the work. Many years have passed, they have grown separate ways and Maxime has stopped dancing.
The new edition questions the initial artistic and dramaturgical choices manifesting it to the audience through the addition of a voice over dialogue, swaying from hilarious to deeply moving, subtly revealing the intimacy of the performers.
In Situ
Four performers are lost in a never-ending re-enactment of a movement sequence. Embodying the male and female counterparts of a relationship in parallel temporalities.
They always miss each other, unable to interact with one another.
After a long period of absurd disconnection, for a fragment in time, every gesture and every word finally makes perfect sense.
They awaken. Only briefly, before falling into loneliness and chaos again.
May Our Bodies Become Bodies Again
The impact of her look falls on him for the second time. Beyond habit and recollection, the psychic experience of the performers evolves through the endless return of motion.
As the duet evolves, the frame of a home builds and transforms, manipulated by so-called technicians, to offer a new perspective of a seemingly ever-returning relationship.
Would You Save From Us ?
Triptych dance film exploring power relationships through movement.
Would you save me from us? was screened at the Gulbenkian Cinema (Canterbury) as part of the
Fresh Takes and at the Southbank Centre as part of the Strive Festival.
Drunk For The Last Time
"Follow me in the ecstasy of alcohol
In the craziness of rythm and movement.
May the structure fall into place
And the bodies become bodies again.
I swear I'll dance as if it was the last time.
I swear I'm drunk for the last time."