Jérôme Bel Isadora Duncan

In this new creation, the danced portrait of Isadora Duncan, Jérôme Bel pursues his explorations into the political dimension of dance. By confronting archives from the past with live performance in the present, it enables us to contemplate thought in the making.

With this piece devised for Elizabeth Schwartz, dancer and teacher, Jérôme Bel focusses on the work of Isadora Duncan, a figure on whom she is a specialist, thereby continuing the series of portraits of dancers that he embarked upon in 2004. Drawing upon her autobiographical account, Ma Vie, this is the first time we see Jérôme Bel dedicating himself to the portrait of a now deceased choreographer. Beneath her novelesque figure, Jérôme Bel builds up the portrait of a visionary choreographer whose immense freedom of expression, with its leaning towards spontaneity and naturalness, laid down the foundations of modern dance, and thus the origins of contemporary dance. Switching between registers, from the discursive to the sensitive, and from spoken moments to danced solos, the piece brings to life the memory of free dance by associating choreographic savoir faire with the experience of the show.
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N.B.For ecological reasons, no air travel is made for the touring of this piece. A version is being created in New York, via Skype, with the dancer Catherine Gallant.

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Estimated running time : 1h