As a choreographer, you are particularly interested in movement, in what precedes and triggers it. How would you describe your choreographic writing?
Many choreographers work on composition, on overall dramaturgy. While my work also involves a form of writing, it is writing that primarily concerns itself with the crafting of movement. I approach movement with the desire to develop a new vocabulary, specific in view of the many different ways of thinking about movement that have existed in Western contemporary dance. If we go back to classical dance, the major systems used to define movement involve geometry, anatomy, and mechanics. They are less known than in music, for instance, more difficult to articulate or analyse. Much of my work has involved offering an analysis of this, first for myself, in order to have a certain understanding of it, then to be able to extend or transform it…
Was Close Up, your new creation, also conceived with that desire to keep questioning movement?
In the history of dance, there exists a strong geometric lineage, notably in the works of George Balanchine, William Forsythe, or Merce Cunningham. Another lineage involves a more physical approach to the body with postmodernism, with Steve Paxton or Trisha Brown. Writing is done less in the tracing of lines or the production of forms than with the physical dimension of the body. Dance is thought of in terms of forces: gravity, inertia, muscular strength… Which creates different bodily experiences. I try to imagine new ways of living and experiencing movement. Close Up is in large part a continuation of that work. To that end, I focused on action verbs, like “strike”, “avoid”, or “throw”. They allow for exploring other dimensions, studying acceleration and muscle tone, as well as affect. Close Up also involves a more instinctive dimension, but this affective dimension is not embedded in a narrative form. Instead, it emanates from the very approach to movement itself.
If Close Up had its writing protocol, your show is imbued with great vigour, at once precise and instinctive…
Throughout their journey, each performer goes through phases of using different techniques. They integrate learning and practices. I invite the dancers to overcome the automatism linked to those techniques by confronting them with paradoxical instructions which aim to give rise to new forms of spontaneity. The situation is of course artificial, but it can sometimes provoke new movements, or transitions between movements which escape the usual paths and reveal an intimate and singular relationship to movement. For the six dancers of Close Up, these are ways of organising the body, of moving from one thing to another, by following a personal process. It’s about connecting to a form of intuition, to call on it and divert it. For instance, I ask them to avoid an imaginary object, with a sense of urgency. It is neither narrative dance nor purely abstract dance; I try to work on an in-between close to the musical experience—hence the presence of contrapuntal works by Bach, performed live by five musicians from the Il Convito ensemble.
What do those works by Bach specifically allow you to do?
In spite of their formal complexity, their affective dimension is very present, because their harmonies and melodies are in no way abstract. They are filled with tension; they are simply heartbreaking… However, it is impossible to attribute those affects and emotions to a specific situation. Those pieces were written before the advent of the classical sonata form, which involves a precise practice of the organisation of music, with a logic of exposition, then first theme, second theme, with well-contrasted characters, development, recapitulation. The logic resembles that of a narrative structure, with an initial situation, an inciting incident, complications, a resolution—like a novel. In Bach’s work, counterpoint escapes that kind of linear logic. What is fascinating about those compositions is their melodies. Their development is profoundly polyphonic, profoundly plural. This music seems to me very contemporary because the linear narratives that made our lives and personal experiences intelligible have imploded in the face of the complexity of reality, of science, of social organisations. It’s the advent of modern literature with Joyce, Proust, or Woolf: meaning is profoundly altered.
The absence of a narrative is one of the important aspects of your shows. Close Up is also a deeply human score, in which the performers look at each other and rely on that to sometimes reproduce each other’s gestures…
Dance allows for the exploration of this distancing from narration, of the emergence of forms that testify to a different relationship to dramatic linearity. While linear narratives may seem outdated, our affectivity, impulses, and bodies haven’t disappeared! We are as full of affects as ever. My work as a choreographer is an attempt to develop a polyphonic relationship to affect and emotion. There are few silences and pauses in Bach’s contrapuntal pieces. They keep unfolding; their structure is continuous. They are thus able to modify our perception of time and space. As if this sonic bath were a photographic developer, in which we could immerse movement like in a fixer, giving our perception a new acuity. This music makes minimal inflections visible in real time.
You mentioned the subtle presence of video in your show. It follows the creation of a short film, Fragments, reprising here the principles of mid-body filming of the performers…
The video setup in Close Up is very specific. The Italian-style theatre of the Opéra d’Avignon offers a significant heterogeneity of perspectives, from the orchestra to the highest balcony. This influenced the conception of the choreography for the first part of the show, in which video is not used. The situation is reversed once video comes in. There’s only one perspective, that of the camera. We do not use an operator in our setup. The dancers come before this frame as if facing a small horizontal window which films them at mid-body, at the level of the navel. They know which part of their body is being filmed and is visible. The image isn’t composed by the one who watches, but by the one who dances. They know where they are and what they’re showing, structuring the image. This framing upends the relationship of power between the one who films, who watches, and the one who is being watched. The performer defines their frame of appearance and constructs the image they present of themselves.
Hasn’t this desire for a different relationship to dance, at once studied and renewed, grown since you became the director of the Centre national de la danse contemporaine in Angers in July 2020?
It is a true experience to lead such an institution, which serves at once as a centre for creation and for the dissemination of works and of choreographic culture, and a school for contemporary dance. Over time, the knowledge and choreographic techniques of the dancers have accumulated, a process facilitated by the broadening and globalisation of the choreographic scene. While this is not a recent phenomenon, it has in a way multiplied, challenging the hegemony of Western scenic techniques, from classical to modern dance, with the arrival of styles like hip hop, for instance. On the one hand, this represents a marvellous opening. On the other, the body needs time to master a technique. To put it another way, when I joined P.A.R.T.S., I came from classical dance. I followed a logical path: deconstructing what I knew to build something else. Those who come to the school of the Cndc-Angers haven’t mastered a single technique that would be the same for everyone. They often seek guidance, need foundations. How can we give them those without falling into academism? We have deconstructed so much that we feel the need to build something together without reinstating disciplinary logics and the power dynamics that accompany them. However, making an artistic gesture intelligible is difficult if it is not part of a context or a shared history. This is not about elitist culture, but rather about creation. From what common references can we exchange and discuss? It’s a fascinating challenge which we try to explore with this new generation.
After working with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, choreographer George Balanchine (1904-1983) continued his career in the United States, where he founded the New York City Ballet. In addition to his work on lines and imbalance, he contributed to freeing dance from its narrative function by focusing on pure music.
American choreographer William Forsythe (born in 1949) directed the Ballet Frankfurt before founding The Forsythe Company. His approach of movement is based on the deconstruction of classical ballet.
American choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) deeply revolutionised choreographic theory, notably by incorporating into his creative process a reflection on chance.
A key figure in postmodern dance, Trisha Brown (1936-2017) was part of the experimental, New York-based Judson Church Theater in the 1960s. Her silky language had a decisive influence on the development of the discipline.
Recently deceased American choreographer Steve Paxton (1939-2024) was also a member of the Judson Dance Theater. Drawing inspiration from everyday movements such as walking, jumping, or sitting, he pioneered contact improvisation.
Interview conducted by Marc Blanchet (February 2024) and translated to English by Gaël Schmidt-Cléach