CND – Centre nationale de la danse
Draf – David Roberts Art Foundation
Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers
Mercat de les flors – DanceHouse
MOCA – The Museum of Contemporary Art
September/October 2021
I WAS SITTING ON MY PATIO… by Robert Wilson & Lucinda Childs
Forty-three years after the first performance of I was sitting on my patio this guy appeared I thought I was hallucinating, Robert Wilson and Lucinda Childs hand over their role to two new performers in this doubled-up solo. I was sitting on my patio… marks a turning point. Robert Wilson staged it in 1977, barely a year after the haunting energy of Einstein on the Beach. It …
NANCY’S LEGACY: a morphological derivation blossoming in gesture
Gestation, meant as the advent of the gesture, the body happening as a corporeal being here and now in this world, has always been a key element, if not pivotal, of Nancy’s entire work, outlining the path and the evolution of his philosophy. Jean-Luc Nancy passed away about a month ago and it seems impossible for me not to put my fingers on the keyboard …
CASCADE by Meg Stuart
In CASCADE, Meg Stuart and seven dancers look for ways to resist the arrow of time. Meeting in structures of rhythmic complexity, they propel their bodies and imaginations into a new temporal space, envisioning a new earth and rebalancing inevitable outcomes. They go in search of a secret passage, a future playground, a sanctuary. This is a place of wavering rules and where any guiding principles …
UNTITLED 2021 by Maria Hassabi
A solo performed by the artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi creates a dialogue with the Jimmy Robert’s exhibition Mirror Language on view until 29th August 2021 at Museion, Bolzano. Hassabi’s performance focuses on the attention given to numerous positions of daily life adapted through his peculiar choreographic style characterized by immobility, deceleration and aesthetic precision. Hassabi goes through daily postures, gently passing from one to …
ISADORA DUNCAN by Jerome Bell
Isadora Duncan is pioneer and trailblazer of the “free” dance, the “dance of the future”. With this piece devised for Elizabeth Schwartz, Jérôme Bel is continuing his series of portraits of dancers, which he embarked upon in 2004, focusing on the figure of one of her specialities, Isadora Duncan. Unlike “Véronique Doisneau”, “Cédric Andrieux” and “Pichet Klunchun and myself”, Jérôme Bel here, for the first time, draws the …
ROMANCES INCIERTOS, UN AUTRE ORLANDO by François Chaignaud & Nino Laisné
Romances inciertos, un autre Orlando is the perfect reflection of the multifaceted talent of François Chaignaud: choreographer, dancer, but also writer, historian and singer, authentic master of crossdressing, over the years Chaignaud has been able to give life to a unique character and mix expertly high culture and pop culture, tradition and innovation, challenging genres and categories. Romances inciertos, un autre Orlando is …
C’EST LE SILENCE QUI RÈPONDE by Yves-Noël Genod
“It’s a show I don’t have the answer to. As always, I try not to know what it’s about, to be overwhelmed by the cosmos of what I create (like a dreamer in the middle of the night). Of course, when there’s a classic text you can easily rely on it. But, here, I would like to bring the audience with me into this …
LE THÉÂTRE ET SON DOUBLE by Gwenaël Morin
After his renditions of classics by the likes of Molière, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Racine, among others, Gwenaël Morin takes on The Theatre and its Double by Antonin Artaud, using the manifesto of the “Theatre of Cruelty” as a premise. With actors and audience members settled inside a giant white bubble, the director examines his experience through the lens of Artaud’s theories and proceeds to destroy his own work …
BIG SISTERS by Théo Mercier & Steven Michel
After Affordable Solution for Better Living, a domestic drama in which an individual fabricates his masculine identity by building an Ikéa shelf, visual artist Théo Mercier and choreographer Steven Michel are continuing their joint exploration of biopower. BIG SISTERS is a piece conceived and designed with four dancers aged 23 to 65, Laura Belgrano, Lili Buvat, Marie de Corte and Mimi Wascher. Imagined like an …
7 by Radouan Mriziga
7 is the conclusion of a Radouan Mriziga’s trilogy (55 – 3600 – 7). The three pieces focus on the relationship between dance, building and architecture. Mriziga connects the moving body to the expression of architectural and sculptural forms. In 7, he enriches this relationship by adding mystery and imagination, inspired by the mythology of the seven wonders of the ancient world. These architectural and artistic …
HABITAT / HALLE E (pandemic version) by Doris Uhlich
In the original version of Habitat / Halle E – which first premiered last autumn – the naked bodies of 120 people slap, vibrate and clash with each other to the sound of electronic and abstract techno tracks. Such a utopian place, where bodies can freely interact, touch each other’s sweaty skin and breath together, seems far, far away in view of the current pandemic. However, …
RE-COLLECTION by Alexandra Pirici
Alexandra Pirici (RO, 1982, based in Bucharest) is an artist who uses choreography both for its economy of means and for its critical energy, as a means of questioning history, monuments and public memory. Re-collection is an ongoing, performative action, built around the notion of collecting, while subverting traditional understandings of the term. Real and fictional objects – works of art and forms of life …
SITTING by Gregory Stauffer
In 1967, the artist Richard Serra wrote a list of verbs denoting ways of acting on a material object. Roll, fold, bend, shorten, plane, tear, carve, split, cut, slice… Given Serra’s proximity to Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti, these words can be read in terms of his interest in dance. With Verbmemove, Gregory Stauffer (CH, 1980, based in Bienne and Genève) pays homage to Serra …
DARK RED by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Dark Red continues to bring dance into the museum, this time at one of Cologne’s oldest art institutions: the Kolumba (1853), a space, designed by Peter Zumthor, rich in religious aura, given both its modern/Gothic architectural palimpsest and much of its collection. Taking the number twelve as its point of departure, in this cross-pollination one sees—almost miraculously intersecting the dodecahedron (a …
PRINZ GHOLAM: DIAL F FOR FATHER by Prinz Gholam
Prinz Gholam: Dial F for Father is a major solo show by the Berlin-based German-Lebanese artist duo. In their performances, Prinz Gholam work with images that are part of our cultural memory, developing stances, postures, and gestures from historical sources. Using the movement of their bodies, they fuse contemporary experience with history. Dial F for Father deals with the often-difficult relationship with (historical) father figures. …
FOCUS on Jonathan Drillet
by David Bernadas Jonathan Drillet is not a dancer but he does dance sometimes. He was born in Brittany in 1981, he lives now in Paris. After different «unfinished but nevertheless fascinating» studies in literature, art history and drama, he collaborated with Raimund Hoghe, Christophe Honoré, Sanja Mitrovic, Alexis Fichet, Hubert Colas, Gerard & Kelly or Julien Prévieux, among others. He is …
21 PORNOGRAPHIES by Mette Ingvartsen
Mette Ingvartsen is a Danish dancer and choreographer. She studied in Amsterdam and Brussels where in 2004 she graduated from P.A.R.T.S. By combining dance and movement with the visual arts, technology and language, she produces hybrid and innovative research. While still a student she made “Manual Focus” in 2003, a performance followed by, among others 50/50 in 2004, Acome (2005), It’s in The Air (2008) …
«LE MILIEU EST BLEU» Ulla von Brandenburg
For this new exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, Ulla von Brandenburg (born in 1974 in Karlsruhe, lives and works in Paris) has imagined a total, evolving project, inspired from the theatre, as well as its imaginary and conventions. Around the notion of ritual, understood as the possibility to explore the relationships between individuals and groups, and to create or not to create something in …
MORNING IN BYZANTIUM Trajal Harrell
Life is fleeting. One false move – and it could all be over. For Eurydice, for example, who is being led from the underworld by her lover Orpheus. Both know that if he turns around to look at her, they can never be together again. Or for the roses, lovingly tended by a gardener who is fully aware that their blossoms are fragile and temporary. …
THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS by Michiel Vandevelde
In The Goldberg Variations dancers Oskar Stalpaert (Platform-K), Michiel Vandevelde and Audrey Merilus set out to use compositions by Bach and choreography by Paxton to expand the possibilities of dance and answer a question. How open, democratic and accessible is dance today? The Goldberg Variations are played on the accordion by Philippe Thuriot. The Goldberg Variations refers to the famous musical composition by J.S. …
VERTICAL PHENOMENOLOGY: for an Ontology of the Time – Movement Binomen
Here it is this arm becoming not arm or not only arm, this swinging flesh that goes from right to left, from left to right, in a coming and going that has no coordinates, in which the left is a “here and now” and the right is also a “here and now”, in which space is displaced by the space occupied by not only the …
NO PARADERAN by Marco Berrettini
“Champagne is a kind of my overalls” says one of the protagonists of this very freely inspired show by Parade, Léonore Massine’s famous choreography for the Russian Ballets after a booklet by Jean Cocteau, curtain scene signed by Pablo Picasso with music by Erik Satie. Far from reproducing this ballet created in 1917, Marco Berrettini overturns the argument, installing the eight dancers in the space …
CONTES ET LEGÉNDES by Joël Pommerat
Joël Pommerat returns to Nanterre-Amandiers with a brand new show, after having presented the emblematic Ça ira (1) Fin de Louis, which immersed the viewer in the 1789 revolution and the origins of our political organization. This time, it is childhood, one of the favorite subjects of the author-director, at the heart of the play, whose characters are aged nine to fourteen. Adolescents or preadolescents, …
ACHTERLAND – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas
Achterland (1990) is a seminal choreographyin Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s oeuvre. This was the first dance material that she wrote specifically for men. For this production, three male dancers joined Rosas, which had previously been a predominantly female company. The minimalism and prevalent femininity of Rosas’ early pieces gave way to an ambiguous no-man’s-land in which boundaries and symbols were blurred. In Achterland, young girls dress up …
PHASE SHIFTING INDEX – Jeremy Shaw
Since the mid-2000s, Canadian artist Jeremy Shaw (born in 1977, based in Berlin) has established a multifaceted artistic practice that beliefs to neuroscience. His fascination with the mapping of the human mind and mechanisms of perception is coupled with an interest in belief systems, subculture, and transcendental experience. At the Centre Pompidou, Jeremy Shaw presents his first major museum exhibition in France with a new …
THE TRILOGY of Laurent Chétouane
What can the body say or what can it hint at in an era of transition in which one knows the step that was but not the step that has to come? Dance has always been at the mercy of the eye, but if this eye were covered, how could we respond to this blindness? If the point at issue, now essential, was …
PNEUMOTHERAPY (II) by Miles Greenberg at Perrotin
PNEUMOTHERAPY (II) is a performance and sculptural installation, it is the second installment in the –therapy series, a set of durational and immersive performance propositions developed while in residency at Palais de Tokyo in the spring of 2019. The first installment HAEMOTHERAPY (I) was presented at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York, on December 18. Each iteration is presented as an open-ended, non-narrative ritual. Every …
KIM GORDON AND DIMITRI CHAMBLAS at Parades for FIAC
Choreographer, dancer, curator and CalArts Dean Dimitri Chamblas joins forces with Kim Gordon, a visual artist and “one of the boldest women in rock” according to The New Yorker, for an intimate and experimental performance between music and movement. The audience is invited to explore the setting where the performance takes place and engage in an immersive, open-ended journey. « I’m upside down but there is …
ARCHEOLOGIA Emmanuelle Huynh & Automat
Emmanuelle Huynh and the DJ Automat (Raphaël Vendramini) did not know one another, but wanted to work together. As is often the case in life, the context of their encounter was to determine its nature and outcome. Emmanuelle Huynh and Raphaël Vendramini see themselves as archeologists. Through sounds and gestures, they seek to reveal aspects of the stories, layers, and secrets, of the artworks they …
INTRANSITO Luigi Riva & Clay Apenouvon
Intransito is a collaboration between Luigia Riva and Clay Apenouvon, as an extension of their project IN/CONTRO, created in March 2019. “The performance explores moments of release and attentiveness, in a performance in which the six dancers express states of perpetual imbalance, between falling and flying. Caught between weight and lightness, each one is both supporting and supported, in a sextet of variable geometries, …
DÉSORDRE DU DISCOURS Fanny de Chaillé
Based on « The Order of Discourse » by Michel Foucault On the 2nd December 1970, Michel Foucault gave his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, the first lesson for which a rewriting subsists, entitled L’Ordre du discours. Fanny de Chaillé recreates the event and puts together a discursive performance destined for university amphitheatres. The effect of this re-enacting of Foucault’s words is to …
TROTTOIR Volmir Cordeiro
The group piece Sidewalk by the choreographer Volmir Cordeiro is a way of evoking metamorphosis as the only means of attaining freedom. Using the figure of the mask, and its capacity to reveal the true behind the hidden, the piece is to be experienced as a form of euphoria in which the overflowing energy of the six dancers opens up the possibility of a theatre of …
MODERN LIVING Gerard & Kelly
Following on from a series of pieces in emblematic places of modern architecture in the USA, the Californian artists return to Paris with the Modern Living project. Taking over two iconic venues designed by Le Corbusier, they explore the sensuality nesting in the shadows of modernism. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and the Apartment-studio are two living spaces which are just as much to do with the invention …
INFINI by Boris Charmatz at Festival d’Automne à Paris
After his preceding work 10000 gestes, Boris Charmatz continues to dig deeper and deeper into the organic and conflictual relationship between the finite nature of the body and the multiplication of numbers, or between physics and algebra. This time around, however, he uses infinity as the starting point for his investigations. Both philosophical and mathematical object, pure abstraction and pillar of reality, infinity is by its …
ESCAPE ACT by Alexandra Bachzetsis at HAU
In the age of mass-produced visual media and steadfast obsession with preserving the youthful body, it is almost impossible to distinguish between appearance and existence. In Escape Act Alexandra Bachzetsis turns her attention with subtle irony to the construction of authenticity and investigates its manifestations in everyday and pop culture. Her Choreography quotes voguing, youtube-tutorials, as well as the language of form of the “Triadic Ballet” …
PARADISO by Richard Maxwell at Greene Naftali
With Paradiso, Richard Maxwell completes his triptych inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. The play takes place in the not-too-distant future, describing three great loves: family, country, and god. In an empty space, a car moves forward and the show begins. A robot launches himself into a monotone and futuristic dithyramb while some individuals, slowly, extricate themselves from the vehicle. “By the way, welcome to the show,” says the robot, “because the best part of a play is that it’s where we meet.” A place that allows us to share ideas that otherwise they would only float in the space. Three monologues follow the improbable prologue of the robot, three stories, one of which evokes the death of the director’s mother, beginning as a philosophical abstraction and then reflecting in a very singular narrative the last days of a woman’s life, told by his son in a domestic landscape that is transformed by the absence of the one who once lived there. Performing human sculpture-like pantomimed vignettes, the performers reveal Maxwell’s idea of paradise as a space larger and more vast than life. In his trademark economical way, the leading figure of American experimental theater asks the question, simply but vigorously: what remains when all the efforts were given, when everything was built and the fights are over? What is the life that goes on when human life is finished?
