Jérôme Bel Danses pour une actrice (Jolente De Keersmaeker)

[Dance]

Jérôme Bel has invited Jolente De Keersmaeker to perform dance solos, and in doing so to cross choreographic operations with dramatic ones in order to redefine the terms of their representation. In this dance piece for an actress, its interpretation by the latter supersedes the formal execution of the gestures themselves.

Using his collaboration with Valérie Dréville as a model, Jérôme Bel has invited the actress Jolente De Keersmaeker to perform solos from the repertory of choreographic modernity with the aim of infusing it with a certain degree of discursivity. The sharing of practices combined with the crossover between the two techniques shifts the necessary conditions for the production of theatre and dance by initiating a new relationship between movement and language. Here, the power of the dramatic interpretation, and the way in which the imagination is incorporated into it, takes pride of place over the formalism of the body as a technical instrument. Similarly, the choreographic writing shows itself to be just as apt in terms of its capacity to express meaning and narrative content as the major texts of dramatic writing. Without seeking to adhere strictly to the choreography, Jolente de Keersmaeker exposes her acting to its own vulnerabilities, notably via the change in the status attributed to language, now reduced to a descriptive function. What we see onstage is nothing other than the uniqueness of the actress herself, and the manner in which she throws an entirely new light on the protocol.