Boris Charmatz SOMNOLE

[Dance]

After a series of group pieces and collective events, Boris Charmatz returns to the minimal form of the solo in a pared-down mental choreography, accompanied only by a faint whistle. A whistled dance which transports familiar melodies and concretions of gestures lying dormant.

In this show, the act of whistling alone, for yourself, “as if it were the outline of a stable centre at the centre of chaos” models movement at the very moment the out-breath escapes from our lips. It allows us to invent a world in expansion – a land of familiar ritornellos from which gestures spring forth. The performer whistles a note, concocts a melody, then another – like an ephemeral cartography of a frame of mind. Here, following on from infini, a piece characterised by its overflowing orality, in which the uttering of figures was transmitted from one body to the next, Boris Charmatz opts for a radical lessening of meaning and physical activity. In SOMNOLE, the exhaled air of whistling joins up with the appearance of a movement, forming a fragile bond of dance and music. As the music builds, with its mixtures and ruptures, different states of liaison develop between whistling and the dynamic of the gesture – whether it be slowed-down, haltering, somnolent or sharp. Like a body in search of respite, Boris Charmatz invents an insomniac form of dance, a refuge of choruses and rhythms on the frontier between daydreams and dark reverie.