There is a shared vibration between music and dance, which are your respective fields of exploration. Can you tell us about how you met and how your research began to resonate with each other?
Lucie Antunes I received an email from Mathilde proposing a collaboration on a performance exploring altered states of consciousness. It immediately resonated with me. This subject, like trance, is part of my musical research. These are threads I also develop in my albums. I perform live in clubs, and this idea of music that lifts people up, that allows access to other states, is fully part of my artistic practice. Mathilde quickly offered to direct me, to which I replied that I agreed, as long as this choreographed concert could also become a record.
Mathilde Monnier Originally, there was the idea of a fusion between dance and music. The project took shape over a year and a half. At a certain point, Lucie’s presence on stage, accompanied by a musical trio, became an obvious choice. We worked by exchanging music, ideas, and words, while I worked on the question of space. This is a fundamental aspect for me in the research process. We also discussed the actual place of music on stage and the performers who would join us, and we exchanged personal references and citations.
On stage, the notion of circularity is central, between the presence of musical instruments and the dance space. How did you conceive this scenography, which seems to erase the boundaries between your two practices?
M.M. By placing Lucie and the music at the centre, the idea of a circular stage quickly emerged, like a reference to a vinyl record: this circularity created a space that felt almost cosmic, allowing me to trigger choreographic movements connected to an imagery of planetary motion, but also of time itself. There is a particular relationship to time in this piece, as if there was a need to materialise the notion of time, as well as that of listening. The aim was to make the invisible tangible. Within the creative team, everyone opened up to this experience. It is a work connected to the present moment, to a form of listening and generosity in sharing.
L.A. Even though I make electronic music, I work with instruments that take up a lot of space: a drum kit, a vibraphone, a piano, modular systems, synthesisers… I usually arrange them in space without really thinking too deeply about their stage configuration. For this concert, the idea was to create music in real time while leaving space for dancers to join us, to enter and exit this circle, to play music, to sing… This situation echoed the recording work I carried out at Le Centquatre in Paris, where I am an associated artist, in order to quickly propose tracks to Mathilde. On that occasion, I invited many artists to work with me, and it was by drawing on this collective effervescence that it seemed important to us to bring the music studio onto the stage. This created a continuity with that research in real time within a rehearsal studio.
How did you explore this theme of altered states with your team?
M.M. The question of altered states opens up a wide spectrum: from Buddhist monks who remain silent for days, to sleep and dreams… In daily life, we often experience these altered states of consciousness. We drift away, then return to reality. It is also closely linked to sound. The musical dimension is central to accessing trance. Here, it is not an individual trance. We start from the central point of the music produced on stage by Lucie and the musicians, and move outward towards the performers, and then towards the audience. We are looking for a point of fusion between stage and audience. Its translation through dance allows me to work with repetitive choreographic modules that invite the audience to follow us. The circularity of the stage intensifies this sense of proximity.
L.A. Here the dancer’s body becomes a transmitter, a point of passage for the audience. The music is a thread being stretched.
There is a kind of ambivalence between the title of the performance – “Silence” – and this musical and sonic continuum that draws us in.
L.A. Mathilde arrived at a moment in my life when I could no longer deal with sound. I could no longer listen to music, except for vocal pieces, such as those by Meredith Monk. I had a project to go and film Corine Sombrun, who is a writer and a specialist in Mongolian shamanism, in Lapland. While talking with her, we began to wonder why not make this film by drawing on our respective living environments—meaning extremely noisy places—in order to search for spaces of silence where the environment exhausts us. We asked ourselves how, from these spaces, it might still be possible to reach forms of meditation. In both the performance and the album, there is a very wide sonic range, from breathing to techno to noise. How is it possible to find silence within this environment? Do we truly have access to these spaces of silence?
M.M. When Lucie suggested this title, it opened up a very broad line of questioning. In silence, there is also the idea of a gap, a suspension from the moment we speak, a moment of drifting that is absolutely fascinating. What do we hear in silence? We are often afraid of it. There is intensity, attention. In moments of silence, our attention becomes much sharper; we hold our breath.
L. A. For this project, I also asked Laura Vazquez to write a libretto called Le centuple du réel. I used some of its chapters to deepen the sonic material, explore vocal textures, and create very different spaces, as if they belonged to an invisible world, through the real-time sound processing of Canblaster.
Does this performance evoke something that could be described as invisible?
M.M. I believe music always evokes shamans, and dance evokes ghosts. For this performance, we are working with dancers who come from Brazil, Gabon, Portugal, Argentina… Some of them have been initiated into rituals. It is through them that the question of the ghost or shamanism settles onto the stage, and that the question of silence opens up.
L.A. We aim to share a human experience, to make possible a collective coexistence in a space that speaks of this fragility.