The acclaimed collective (LA) HORDE, which has been leading the Ballet National de Marseille since 2019, captivates audiences worldwide. For the International DANCE Festival Munich, they are creating a performative installation titled „The Master Tools“, specifically designed for Muffatwerk. In an interview they reveal what the audience can expect.

Carmen Kovacs: How do you approach the format of the “performative exhibition”?  

(LA)HORDE: Our approach is deeply rooted in the identity of (LA)HORDE. We have been working together as a collective of artists for about 15 years. This means that we create our works collaboratively, in a very transversal way, and we use various media. We direct, we choreograph, but we also make movies, installations, sculptures, art videos.
Museums and alternative spaces for artistic encounters have always intrigued us.  
We love the theater format, where everyone sits together in a dark room, looking in one direction, sharing time and space with the dancers. It’s an elevated, almost ancient experience a form that we have inherited from the Greeks and yet one that can still be completely contemporary. But for us, this experience can manifest in many different places.  
We have a strong interest in breaking the fourth wall and exploring playful possibilities to establish direct contact with the audience, creating a new sense of closeness. Theater provides a safe space for transgression, a place where emotions, images, and concepts can be explored. But we always ask ourselves: how can this be extended into the “real world”? This exhibition brings together different works and feels almost like a translation into this specific space.  

CK: What do these pieces have in common? Where do we find resistance?  

CK: What do these pieces have in common? Where do we find resistance?  

(LA)HORDE: When we bring works together, liminal spaces emerge between them, generating new meaning. In this performative exhibition, we bring together extracts of three existing performances and video works, all in dialogue with one another. To Da Bone originated from our discovery of the first Jumpstyle videos on YouTube. We immersed ourselves in this world and found people who had uploaded hundreds of videos because they had been continuously working on their skills since childhood. Yet, they were considered amateurs because they were not affiliated with any institution – this type of dance had not been institutionalized, was not commercial, and was not even clearly urban. It was purely community driven art, where people provided each other with feedback.  
We started mapping out the community, contacting them, and inviting them to collaborate on a 15-minute experimental film project, which was later shown at around 70 festivals. This evolved into a ten-minute performance and eventually a one hour stage production. Meanwhile, a documentary about the process was also made. After performing the work on many stages, we presented it at Nuit Blanche alongside other artworks in a completely different way, within a completely different dramaturgy. From the beginning, we experimented with formats and alternative spaces. In the documentary, a dancer was asked: “What was the strangest place you’ve ever danced?” His answer: “Of course, on a stage.” For the Jumpstyle dancers, it feels more natural to dance in all sorts of unconventional spaces. Originally, this dance consisted only of short, improvised 30 second sequences expanding it to over an hour felt counterintuitive at first and created a certain resistance. For us, the Jumpstyle dancers embody the rage rising in Europe, rage that needs to be channeled. The rise of the far right in so many countries signals that something is deeply wrong in our society, and it also speaks to the anger of our youth. How can we address this? How do we channel this anger artistically into something that becomes a form of resistance? A resistance directed against the actual problem.  
The Beast is a performance centered around a limousine, a reenactment that emerged when Trump was first elected President in the U.S. In New York, limousines were identified as symbols of power and vandalized everywhere (“The Beast” is, by the way, the name of Trump’s limousine). This object inherently carried something violent and aggressive.  
We became obsessed with this image obsessed with its destructive force. At the same time, we stumbled upon a very strange contest, organized by car brands and exploited for advertising purposes: the person who kissed the car the longest would win it as a prize. Out of desperation, many people subjected themselves to this humiliating entertainment strategy, and the organizers exploited their hardship to generate free content.  
We found this completely absurd and wanted to recontextualize and rewrite this competition not by replicating its violence but by giving the performers the choice of how long they wanted to engage in the kiss with the limousine. While elements of aggression and the original absurdity remain, a reversal of the original intent takes place a distortion of the narrative that makes us question: Are we kissing the symbol of power or its destruction?  
The combination of these two pieces creates a fascinating dynamic. While one group of performers remains in a meditative submission to the object of adoration, the Jumpstyle dancers embody an intense, energetic form of engagement and resistance.  
Tomorrow is Cancelled adds a third layer of resistance. As the phrase "Tomorrow is cancelled" is written across the floor throughout the space, it is simultaneously erased by cleaning machines. In France today, visible manifestations of protest are systematically fought and erased. As soon as a demonstration ends, cleaning crews move in to remove any trace of rebellion. This work reflects the ongoing struggle between the ability to raise one's voice against something and the simultaneous attempts to silence those voices.  
Additionally, three video works are shown: Novaciéries, our first project with Jumpstyle dancers, The Master’s Tools, a film featuring both the Jumpstyle performances and the limousine performance, and Cultes, which reflects on mainstream and counterculture at a festival in France. We asked ourselves what remains of the art form of festivals of the original celebratory idea of coming together. The plastic waste, junk food, and all the symbols that are randomly thrown together and diluted to the point that they become meaningless. And yet, in the end, in this seemingly chaotic setting, there is this mass of 40,000 people moving together in the same frequency. It was quite fascinating that within this absurd scenario you can actually find spirituality. We are deeply drawn to these contradictory spaces.  

CK: What special value do you see in dance?

(LA)HORDE: Dance is transversal; it exists in all cultures. It has an omnipresent, universal celebratory quality and, at the same time, is one of the most fragile art forms.  
For us, dance enables the deepest form of empathy an art that reaches us directly, physically, and emotionally, without subtitles, full of spaces for personal projection. We love the grey areas and paradoxes that dance can express.  

CK: How has your perspective on dance evolved over time?  

(LA)HORDE: Our perspectives and approaches to dance and art in general have been there from the beginning, but over time, we have learned to understand them better. Simply because we have seen our works performed so many times. We create them, then rehearse them, then go on tour, giving feedback along the way. But there are also moments when we step back and try to look at what we have created from a certain distance and reflect on our practice.  
In doing so, we become more and more aware of what was there from the very beginning. 

Interview: Carmen Kovacs

Founded in 2013, (LA)HORDE brings together Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel. The collective explores the political significance of movement and has developed the concept of “post-internet dance.” Since 2019, they have been directing the Ballet National de Marseille, collaborating with international artists on interdisciplinary projects and choreographies.

Co-production: Charleroi danse, Théâtre de la Ville de Paris, MAC - Maison des Arts de Créteil, le Manège - scène nationale de Reims, Teatro Municipal do Porto, POLE-SUD - CDC Strasbourg, La Gaîté Lyrique, BNP Paribas Foundation, DICRéAM - Support for Multimedia and Digital Artistic Creation, Spedidam, Institut français - Convention with the City of Paris.

Support: City of Paris, SACD - Society of Authors and Dramatic Composers, Cité internationale des Arts, Liberté Living-Lab, CCN2 - National Choreographic Centre of Grenoble, DGCA - Directorate General for Artistic Creation.

The (LA)HORDE collective was in residence at Charleroi danse, MAC - Maison des Arts de Créteil, Teatro Municipal do Porto, le Manège - scène nationale de Reims, and CCN2 - National Choreographic Centre of Grenoble.