This project reflects artistic research on movement, the body, grace, power, gestural precision, elegance and commitment. Through this sporting discipline, anchored in traditions, and dance, also part of human activities since time immemorial, Polina Jourdain-Kobycheva wanted to create a poetic dialogue between two disciplines. It is about proposing a new vision, establishing the link between two activities which structure local life, in its cultural dimension. The dancers and the pelotaris, – in the side by side images will be confronted with two activities which, a priori, have nothing to do with each other. But this confrontation will be fruitful in that it will associate two physical expressions marked by technicality, commitment and precision, two expressions, one sporting, the other artistic (but interconnected since, obviously, dance is also a physical activity and the gestures of the pelotari have an obvious aesthetic dimension), two expressions which, finally, bring life and structure the Basque territory. In the series on the craftsmanship of Basque pelota, the artist wanted to show the other side of Basque pelota artisans. “We often talk about the players but we never don’t often talk about the people who make the instruments”, she explains. From a chestnut branch to a chiste-ra, from a beech trunk to a pala, from a latex core to a ball... highlighting the know-how of these artisans who work for Basque ball : manufacturers of chistera, xare or balls. Polina Jourdain-Kobycheva entered the intimate workshops to tell us the fruits of a story between a man, a material and a culture.

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