Cinq apparitions successives
2019 – (Five successive apparitions)
First movement – the proscenium
An upright body arrives, as if from the audience, from the chorus, the Coryphaeus, perhaps. The stage is empty, the curtains are still. In this abandoned space, with their back mainly to the audience, the figure performs a physical, musical incantation, where body and voice come together to send an archaic message, to bring something into being, to make it appear at last.
Second movement – upstage
The curtain contorts, a body swells its folds, warps its lines. The body is on the threshold, ready to come through and respond to the call. The barrier of the possible is broken, shapes appear and are sacrificed in a profusion of unpredictable apparitions.
Third movement – centre stage
The body appears in the space at last. The vision can manifest and a dialogue begins with the proscenium. The dance unfolds in the language of the body that brought forth the vision, and therefore in a vocabulary close to that of the chorus/audience. The vision becomes increasingly powerful, determined and real. A moving snapshot that comes closer and closer, zooming on the apparition of the body.
--
Over the last few years, I've led various workshops during which the dancers and I have developed an exercise to heighten our explorations and exchanges, using a prop that you can find in any dance studio : the curtain in front of the mirror. Through the movements of the curtain, we gain successive glimpses of our reflection and of our expectations.
I feel the need now to take this experimentation further and bring it to the stage. Someone personifying the audience calls out to a body behind the curtain. This body appears, occupies the space and comes into proximity with the first body. Each apparition lasts between ten and fifteen minutes and takes place in three movements.
Five times.
Once to feel.
Once to perceive.
Once to forget.
Once to rediscover.
Once to come together.