Boris Charmatz 10000 gestes

[Dance]

Following on from the unbridled orality of danse de nuit (2016), Boris Charmatz returns to the perception-based questions at the origin of his earlier work Levée des conflits (2010). In this dance utopia in which no gesture is ever repeated, he creates an uninterrupted torrent of gestures, interspersed with trembling and spasms. A sensory and choreographic challenge that saturates our perception space.

We can invent one gesture, two gestures or three gestures, no problem. But how on earth can we invent ten thousand gestures? By experimenting with the limits of what makes a gesture - what distinguishes the movement of an arm or a leg from another - Boris Charmatz once again subjects choreography to a frontier, signified, in the title, in the form of a challenge. What can a mass of bodies engaged in carrying out such a huge quantity of non-repeated gestures in an increasingly saturated playing space actually look like? A sculpture? A living installation? A ghost-like choreography? As in Levée des conflits, at the origin of 10 000 gestes is the horizon of a perception-based fantasy, namely that of creating a visual, almost subliminal illusion using the resources of choreographic art. The idea is to create a flowing form in which the performers are both more and less than the sum total of their bodies. They become atoms, subject to the laws acting upon them, a pure succession of states and variations of intensity. In this dance mirage, the profusion of bodies seeks to attain a state constant transformation, in which physical matter fights against its own dissolution. Amidst this ephemeral torrent racked with contractions, however, we encounter the desire to make a mark of some sort: of something which remains.
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Running time: 1h