© Thibault Vancraenenbroeck
... stream without beginning or end, which gnaws at it's two banks and takes on speed in its centre.
Every point of a rhizome can be connected to any other. Very different to the functioning of a tree or a root, a rhizome does not cease to create links, to produce new rhizomes which return to other structures, other organisms. There are no "points" or "positions" in a rhizome as one finds in a tree or a root. It is made up of multiplicities. A rhizome can be broken at any place. It takes up again following such-or-such a line, endlessly reconstructing and rebuilding itself.
A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari
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The choreographic language developed within the quartet ... rhizomes... explores the semantics of the movement, its qualitative and dynamic aspects, to question the meaning of the corporeal language it serves to develop, in abstraction.
The rhizome is an open map that can be easily connected to all its dimensions, reversible and constantly susceptible to modifications. Choreographically, we question the movement itself. The choreographic work feeds on articulated or segmented lines, stratum and territories of the senses, all of which are inherent to the rhizomes. We also explored escape routes by which these rhizomes are constantly fleeing. These routes are continuously returning to each other, exploding and creating ruptures. These gestures serve to develop and reconstruct the rhizome.
At the same time, a movement of listening to the self takes shape. Crossing the layers from the centre to the exterior, and from the surface to the interior, the body is cleared of all artifice, creating a corporeal language made of physical matter, of body and the way we perceive it.
Michaël Jarrell's composition Rhizomes has been an important source of inspiration in the search for movement. This composition, written between 1991 and 1993, is part of the composer's series Assonances.
During the choreographic process other compositions have become essential partners in the creation. In particular, Kaija Saariaho's Près, for cello and electronics, written in 1991, and Salvatore Sciarrino's All aure in una lontanza for flute.
Près is divided into three movements that appear in the choreographic structure in different ways. The first movement concentrates on a linear "texture" in which the cello's score merges at times with synthetic sounds. The first movement's development is strewn with long suspensions ending in silences. These silences create a cyclic notion within the movement as well as in the choreography. The second movement gives form to a rhythmical section, a kind of "ostinato" wherein serious and harmonic sounds alternate. The third section serves to develop a polyphonic section, whose textures approach noise at times.
Olga de Soto