The invisible we are discussing here does not concern the domain of objects some material impossibility forbids us to see (such as a face plunged in darkness), but that of objects we believe we see when they are in no way perceptible because they do not exist and/or are not present (such as a face absent from a lighted room). (1)
L’invisible, Clément Rosset
This project is born from the desire for dance, to be dancing a dance of states, a dance of impetus, a dance made of movements and gestures, of bursts and fulgurations where bodies thrown in action, in space and time, meet a mental projection. There arises dreaming as an outpouring of the unconscious, but also the dream of the one who fantasises awake, who is thrown towards that which is not yet, towards a location different from where it seems to be, and there the mirage appears.
The notions of mirage and of a displaced image taking shape in the air allow me to take up again a thread, a path, a physical research into this dance that still throbs, and that was already present in works such as Murmurs (1) , … rhizomes… (anarborescences) (2), Éclats mats (3) ou INCORPORER ce qui reste ici au dans mon cœur (4) (concerning the study of dancers’ kinesthetic memory), to give substance to a dance carried, projected, deported displaced. A sometimes suspended, vaporous dance, a dance of silence amid the shrill tumult of our world. A dance of withdrawal, a dance of abstraction, but also a dance in varying densities, a dance traversed, a passing dance, a dance free of its states and its affects, its drives and impulses, a double dance, both physical and mental.
It is the evocation of this infinite space drawn by the emergence of images and the arrangement of words (explored in my projects through the oral history of the work and the anthropology of the spectacle), which now brings me back to the body, to the necessity of the body, to be in the body. This necessity is driven by the desire to probe sensory paths and by the desire to question, through movement and gesture, these multiplicities that can resonate in the imaginary – a space I have summoned in previous choreographic projects as a matter of incarnated, active dance, supported by the silent words which carry it (the sub-texts of the dancers).
PROJECT OR "TO THROW SOMETHING FORWARD"
We start from the notion of "mirage" in order to conceive of a form through which to explore various possible modes of presence where body, dance, light, and sound are offered not only on the basis of the visible, but also on that of the invisible, in a place other than where they seem to be.
Part of the process involves the use of words and images as levers to nourish the imagination of movement. But also to give shape to an arrangement of ideas, sensations and bodily voices, whose intertwining of their subtexts motivate our impulses, our dynamics, and the sensitive and fluctuating dimension of our bodies at work. We address the question of incarnation and presence in the production of dance, of affirmation in movement and in thought, observing how the movement of thought takes shape.
In Mirage, we choose the body in opposition to a "loss of body", we occupy it and invest it with multiple energies, and this, in a constant dialogue between production [of movement], projection and reception, presence and absence, visible and invisible.
REFRACTION / MIGRATION
In resonance with the phenomenon of the “mirage”, and like a displaced image taking shape in the air, one of the objectives of the project was to imagine a scenic object that can be moved from the stage space to the exhibition space. The scenic object, moved and presented in a museum-like space, is doubled and becomes thought this transposition Mirage Displacement, much as the diffracted reflection of an image is refracted through the layers of air in the atmosphere.
The two works, Mirage and Mirage Displacement, contain elements that are similar in part, but exist as separate entities, each reflecting the distinct contexts of their presentation.
GESTURAL ELEMENTS
In Mirage we explore forms and survivals that inhabit the body through the implementation of a dual score that explores the universe of traces, signs, and clues, carried by numerous mental images. The body is explored as a receptacle and a place of passage, both traversed, evolving in a space and a time filled with bodies that are “missing” yet present, rustling in an empty and yet clearly inhabited space.
On the gestural level we have engaged the body in a kinaesthetic approach in which weight, breath, gestures, and dynamics, but also images and words, nourish both dancers’ and audience members’ multiple perceptions.
We therefore explored relationships between gesture and action, movement and memory, transmitter and receiver, actor and witness, to give shape to the language of the piece, in a deep exploration of the body and its different systems – skeletal, muscular, sensory and nervous, peripheral and central.
THE ARTWORK
The artworks present in the piece are the result of a first collaboration with the Belgian multidisciplinary artist Sophie Whettnall, whose works have been exhibited in several countries and whose universe resonates surprisingly with my work and my concerns.
Sophie's work offers a reflection on the forces that define our relationship to the world around us, by materialising and documenting them. Very attached to natural materials, her work focuses among other things on the trace of gesture and light, of which she analyses the presence, areas of passage, and absence. The omnipresence of the line and the gesture's trace, the obsession with perforation and holes, shadow, glitter and reflection, trajectory and suspension run through her works, many of which are deeply related to nature.
The material Sophie proposed for Mirage is paper, a material she holds dear and has used in her series Longueur d’ondes, Paper Cut, Plaster Landscapes and The Stars. As in those works, very large sheets were considered and explored. They are present as surface, space, splitting, but also as potential volumes, which by the action of bodies become projection surfaces for the viewer’s imagination.
I see paper as a material coming from trees, their reminiscences, the body of a document, the medium for words and images, drawing and painting, a sound element, but also a surface, a body and a flexible volume, changeable at will.
LIGHT
The lighting creation has been entrusted to Philippe Gladieux, thus renewing our collaboration. Philippe Gladieux’s work creates luminous spaces that unfold like abstract times through which one travels. His creations explore light as a living, elastic material, and are embodied in autonomous plastic entities, endowed with their own dramaturgy. This dramaturgy unfolds like a score composed of particular units of time, place, colour, and texture.
SOUND ENVIRONMENT AND MUSIC
The sound environment, created by Benoît Pelé, coexists with the musical world of the Italian composer Fausto Romitelli, who died in 2004.
The sound landscape, in which the five performers evolve, confronts and sets in dialogue the sounds of the bodies and the materials, while giving an important place to silence, resonance, and the relation between sound and corporality. In Mirage, the advent of sound is directly related to the presence of the body, and explores the physical relationship between matter and sound, but also the relationship between sound and image, with the idea that matter and space could preserve the memory of the sounds encountered, to the point of being able to find traces of this evanescent phenomenon that is sound.
Therefore, Mirage’s dramaturgy of sound takes shape from the meeting of sounds at once concrete and impalpable specific to the work of Benoît Pelé, and the musical composition of Fausto Romitelli. It starts from the sounds produced on stage, by the bodies and the material, then progressively introduces natural sounds from external environments and events, notably the sounds emitted by icebergs breaking and the movement of glaciers related to the ice melting, forcing them, at last, to coexist with the musical universe of Fausto Romitelli, in three extracts of his composition An Index of Metals.
An Index of Metals was Fausto Romitelli final work, created in autumn 2003, barely a year before his death. The original text, commissioned to Kenka Lèkovich, deploys a long meditation on Drowning Girl, a work of Pop Art painted in 1963 by Roy Lichstenstein, which depicts a weeping young woman drowning herself; a troubled dive in deep water, which the music of Romitelli deliberately chooses to identify, in the words of Jean-Luc Plouvier.
At the heart of Fausto Romitelli's work is the idea of approaching sound as a material to be forged, so that, in his own words: grain, thickness, porosity, brilliance, density, and elasticity are the main characteristics of these sound sculptures obtained by amplification and electroacoustic treatments but also through purely instrumental writing. After the creation of Professor Bad Trip, Romitelli continued this research to the limits of perception. He projects timbre as a light trying to get to the bottom of the hallucination that can render sound visual.
Olga de Soto, 2019.
—
(1) Free translation from French text: L'invisible dont il est question ici ne concerne pas le domaine des objets qu'une impossibilité matérielle interdit de voir (tel un visage plongé dans l'obscurité), mais celui des objets qu'on croit voir alors qu'ils ne sont aucunement perceptibles parce qu'ils n'existent pas et/ou ne sont pas présents (tel un visage absent d'une pièce éclairée).
(2) First performed in 1997 at Festival Uzès Danse, in Uzès (FR).
(3) First performed in 1999 at Théâtre de la Cité internationale, in Paris.
(4) First performed in 2001 and revived in 2005 at Centre Pompidou, in Paris.
(5) An evolutionary and accumulative project composed of four different accompanied solos created between 2004 and 2009 at Centre Pompidou, in Paris.