Shonen - Éric Minh Cuong Castaing

Associate Artist

From 2021 to 2024 ICK will collaborate intensively with Artist Associate Éric Minh Cuong Castaing and his company SHONEN. Castaing has been selected before by Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten to be associate artist at the Ballet National de Marseille from 2016 to 2018.

The focus of his choreographic research is the ‘augmented body’: new technologies that interfere with our everyday lives to such an extent that they become an extension of our own body.

Castaing attends and graduates college at the Gobelins l’école de l’image in Paris, where he studies visual arts. After his graduation, he spends several years working in animated film. Because of his interest in using technology and visual effects in different disciplines, Castaing becomes acquainted with hip-hop and contemporary dance, among other things. In 2007 he founds his own company, ‘Shonen’, and from this moment on he starts collaborating with other young creators of his generation.

website ( Comapny Shonen )

Photo: Kamila K. Stanley

2024 - WAKA

On Feb. 9, the groundbreaking performance WAKA comes to the Netherlands. WAKA offers a vivid portrait of the Ugandan youth of "Waka Starz" who are determined to be part of the course of the world. During the performance, you will be taken to Wakaliga, a poor neighborhood in Uganda's capital city, where the Waka Starz grew up. Racheal M, rising star in the Ugandan pop scene and leader of the group, is invited by Choreographer Éric Minh Cuong Castaing to tell the real story of their village, desires, beliefs and the meaning behind the lyrics and songs. The two stages between the Netherlands and Uganda will be connected via a livestream with real-time footage of the Waka Starz, complemented by live perfomance in the Netherlands.

The performance will be performed in English or Swahili/Ugandese, and will be partially subtitled in English and French.

Prior to the performance, there will be an interview with Éric Minh about the development and creation of this project.

< More info WAKA >

2022 - FORME(S) DE VIE

In Forme(s) de vie, choreographer Éric Minh Cuong Castaing brings together dancers and adults with disabilities. In this way, he reveals the (adaptive) power of bodies that are all too often written off. On stage, dancers come together with performers who have lost their mobility. With the embodiment of prostheses by the dancers, this performance/installation questions the contemporary idea of an augmented body.

Which gestures would you keep if movement became a problem, an objective, a struggle that claimed all your attention? As an extension of L'Âge d'Or, which was made with children with a motor neurone disease, Forme(s) de Vie offers a new way of dancing together. From the necessity of the human gesture. The performance-installation develops around a film on several screens and also involves the bodies of the visitors. Dancers compensate with their bodies for the motor shortcomings of others, such as an ex-dancer and an ex-boxer. The dancers are used as prostheses, as it were. That affects the awareness of their bodies and their relationship to each other. And to the present, in our individualistic, ultra competitive and techno scientific society.

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2018 - School of Moon

SCHOOLOFMOON - part II /Story of rehearsal : "Ere post-humaine" from SHONEN on Vimeo.

< click for more info here >