CARMEN LAFRAN
I n t e r d i s c i p l i n a r y A r t i s t
U P C O M I N G
King Lear Variationen - world premiere 21st/22nd February 2025 Societaetstheater Dresden
Ropeberry for Die Höhle Festival 12th/13th June, Theater Expedition Metropolis, Berlin
and more tba
ONGOING PROJECTS AND PERFORMANCES
DELIKATESSEN
Concept, Performance, Choreography Carmen Lafran
Live music Gabor Hatyani
“For us, eating and being eaten belong to the terrible secret of love”
Inspired by the words of Hélène Cixous, DELIKATESSEN is a performance about the tiny boundary between what we understand as love and the inevitable violence we inflict on one another. We are cut, dissected and served on a table of cheering glasses.
Delikatessen is an immersive performance conceived, choreographed, and performed by artist Carmen Lafran, blending butoh dance, physical theatre, and performance art. Audience interaction forms both the opening and closing rituals of the piece, inviting viewers into a transformative experience. The work has premiered at Berlin Art Week 2024 (venue: MaHalla Berlin) as a work in progress with improvised live music by Gabor Hatyani (cello).
The scene features a performance artist, a musician, and a table prepared for a banquet that will never happen.
ROPEBERRY
ROPEBERRY is a physical theatre project, whose main ingredients are butoh dance and shibari. Conceived in 2012 as a collaboration between Coco Katsura and Valentin Tszin, Ropeberry has been reimagined and developed from 2022 togeter with the new group members, butoh dancer Carmen Lafran and sound artist Daniel Williams, as an ironic saga about evil and good, about the absurdity of war, power relationships, systems in the system, hope for freedom and despair for the current situation.
Ropeberry is for us also about the value of art as resistance and resilience in a world where economic interests leave little space for artists to express their voices. In this survival mode each narration is tragi-comic, reflecting the ridiculousness of the human nature oscillating between brutal forces and ideal ambitions. Carrying these oppositions ROPEBERRY is absolutely ironic because rather than dismissing contradictions, it embraces them, together with the loss of meaning that follows. Nevertheless our goal is not to pursue nothing, but rather to cultivate and grow this nothingness of meaning in order to let something else emerge out of it. Perhaps in the neurons of the spectators.
ROPEBERRY Creators:
Coco Katsura : Shibari master
Valentin Tszin / Carmen Lafran : Butoh
Daniel Williams: Sound
Each edition of Ropeberry has hosted and will continue hosting one or more guests from different artistic fields, in cronological order: Alexey Kokhanov, Maurice Ginsberg, Louis Fleishauer, Hilary Whitmore, Yuko Kaseki
