"L'œil nu" by Maud Blandel, extracts

They say a star starts dying when, with its hydrogen reserves depleted, it can no longer exist in a state of equilibrium. Thus begins a long phase of degeneration which will lead, based on the size of the star, to the collapse of its heart, or even to a violent explosion. For this creation, French-Swiss choreographer Maud Blandel associates the astrophysical phenomenon of pulsars* to the tragic memory of the sound of her father’s heart exploding. Adapting the principles of rotation, gravity, and periodicity, L’œil nu, with its six dancers, turns the cloister of the cemetery of the Chartreuse de Villeneuve lez Avignon into the perfect observation field. When faced with a body (be it astral, physical, or collective) in a state of degeneration, what do we truly perceive? More than the mere reconstitution of an autobiographical event, Maud Blandel plays here with changes of scale, keeps the tragic at bay, and translates into images the workings of memory: its persistence, its loops as much as its holes, its grey areas and other inventions. 

*Formed after the explosion of the heart of a massive star, a pulsar is a celestial body spinning at very high speed