Boris Charmatz La Ruée

A collective performance based loosely on the book Histoire mondiale de la France by Patrick Boucheron, La Ruée signalled the last event in the Musée de la danse, the structure Boris Charmatz has directed over the last ten years. As part of the Portrait opening, this dancing and speaking community is set to stir up History, shaking up its grey areas and matching its unspoken thoughts as it recalls dates from prehistory to the year 2015.

Situated in the heart of the Seine-Saint-Denis area, the MC93 de Bobigny is at the crossroads of France’s various histories – its working class history, as well as its colonial, urban and cultural ones. What better place to make heard the open History proposed by the Histoire mondiale de la France collective work, published in 2017 by the historian Patrick Boucheron in an effort to counter identity-based tensions? How can we give voice to a book, make history move on, and pass it through moving bodies in order to disseminate its different areas of knowledge within the confines of a theatre? In order to take up the challenge, Boris Charmatz has brought together dancers, performers and actors, creating a constellation of simultaneous actions: from 34,000 B.C. to 2015, from Lascaux to the Francs, from The Terror to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and until the death of Michel Foucault, the bodies of those participating bring the dates to life, crossing time-scales and places in the process. We witness the articulation of a unique intertwining of unknown zones in History and the bringing up to date of their meaning. Chanted, yelled, murmured, told balancing on one hand or doing tap dancing at the same time, La Ruée is a form of history which exposes the manner in which History acts upon bodies, stirs and structures them. At the heart of Yves Godin’s lighting installation Douce France, part-state of emergency and part-nightclub, embodied dates and facts go on the rampage in the theatre space.
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Running time : 3h