Vertébrés
World premiere January 30, 2015
at Le Phare, Pharenheit Festival
Le Phare/ CCN du Havre Normandie
Conception/ choreography: Margot Dorléans
Dancers: Marie-Charlotte Chevalier, Maxime Guillon-Roi-Sans-Sac, Luna Paese
Lighting: Gilles Gentner
Running time: 40 min
Production : Du Vivant sous les Plis
Creative assistance: Le Phare, Centre chorégraphique national du Havre Normandie,
direction Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh
Other support: Fondation Royaumont, L’Étoile du Nord-Scène conventionnée Danse
Vertébrés (Vertebrates) is a choreographic work for 3 dancers conceived as a living exhibition of 3 bodies who are trying to get up. A poetic, silent manifestation in the nude – expressing the urgency of the potential of those who are alive.
It is created in variable geometry and is meant to be performed in situ.
It is an interior space-time in which multiple densities trigger the imagination of an essential source in perpetual mutation.
Genesis
This project came into being during Transforme – the 2012/ 2013 version, a program of Research and Choreographic Composition under the direction of Myriam Gourfink at the Abbey of Royaumont – who asked us to examine the idea of Language. The entire program, based on the discovery and practice of different somatic techniques allowed me to increase my awareness of the choice of – and the impact of -- words on the body experience in the different settings (Energy Yoga, Body- Mind Centering, hypnosis). From the conception to the execution of the project, it was an important step to transmit material through language, teaching the dancers to experience their movement at the center of their physical sensations.
I have always been interested in understanding my body, its organization, its functions – and dysfunction; this something which lives without my being particularly aware of it, but which nonetheless accompanies me on a daily basis, both in my artistic practice as in my life. And I have always been fascinated by its potential to speak, to manifest concretely the problems (or the exhilarations) which I might encounter in my life; like the significant reactions of my interior moods.
Through dance, as well as therapeutic work oriented toward Chinese and Tibetan medicine, or in studying different techniques such as shiatsu and yoga, I observed the strength, the power of this psychic and physical structure which is what characterizes us. I also observed how the body is sometimes neglected, how much it asks for attention, going far beyond the hackneyed public health ads we have all seen. Listening to it means listening to the pulse of life. In Vertébrés, the dancers allow the pulse of different body structures to shape their dialogues with gravity.
I see the body as the first vector for our being in the world, in our environment. The idea was to approach the world via the body, touching that world.
Vértébrés
photographie de Laurent Paillier
The essential
Vertébrés is a manifestation which is performed in a given moment in space, in silence, where the act of getting up for these bodies takes on the power of an uprising. Stripping the self of everything so as to reach the heart. There is an urgency in proclaiming the potential of the living. Somewhat like the “Mouvement des Indignés” (Movement of the Indignant, a European movement similar to the Occupy movement in the U.S.), this rising of the bodies is a mild, pacifist claim, which multiplies in number, time and space.
This is a “manifestation” in both senses of the word:
- Rendering tangible the invisible forces working within us, part of our corporality
- An assembly, a protest
The bodies are supported only by themselves, using their own structure, their own flesh to confront gravity. They stand up to expose their “hollow” side, to reveal themselves and their vulnerability, radically posed in their own nakedness.
The visibility of the space in the venue is achieved through the bodies, as the space is filled, inhabited, exemplified in these bodies rising. The “set” is these bodies, filling the space with these human presences posing and exposing themselves like an essential force in perpetual transformation. By revealing their nakedness, the bodies show us their process of permanent mutation, creating physical landscapes in movement.
Physical work
The work is based on developing an awareness of the different areas of the body (fluids, skin, muscles, bones). The awareness of the body as material is enhanced by different techniques of touching; the relationship of the skin to the environment, as well as developing a kind of porosity and improving the softening and releasing of the dancer’s muscles. Focusing on handholds and weight transfers also infuses the movement from horizontality to verticality; weight must be calculated through these holds so we can see the changes in density in the bodies, and a sort of hesitation in the dialogue with gravity.
There is work focusing on the spine and the axis, our “interior tree,” exploring all the possible micro-vertebral movements in all the spatial planes (frontal, sagittal, horizontal) and allowing for a building toward verticality. The interior axis is an integral part of the verticality of the dancers.
Working with all these elements is a way of finding the “fluid space of forces” cited by Deleuze. This fluid space is also built by working on presence and listening: being present means being aware of one’s own sensation without wanting to control it; not trying to do something but letting it happen; accepting that it can take time. It’s about being receptive to what is happening inside the body (feeling the heartbeat, the breathing, other internal movements).
The physical work asks the dancers to find a way of being which will render mobility possible and will give them a specific elasticity. It is a practice of actively letting go.