Jérôme Bel
Estelle Zhong Mengual
R. B Jérôme Bel
Danses non humaines
[Dance]
In the heart of the Louvre, Jérôme Bel and Estelle Zhong Mengual take us on a guided visit via choreographies which are the living proof of to what extent dance is a domain not just reserved to humanity. They experience, through action, the idea that the body is the means for a shift by the human being towards other life forms.
In this new project that takes place in the Louvre galleries, Jérôme Bel extends to the world of the non-human his research into dance and the other. This collaboration with the art historian Estelle Zhong Mengual enables him to identify the different strategies chosen by choreographers in order to organize the potential otherness of the human body, whether they borrow shapes from the animal or plant worlds or from elements of nature. This walkabout through the museum halls enables us to navigate between several figures of established western dance, together giving rise to a non-anthropocentric form of organicity. With clear echoes to the urgency of the ecological crisis, this return to a horizontality of all living beings reaffirms the central place occupied by our sensitivity in relation to the world, presented here as the means for a broadening of our awareness of our place in nature. Firmly anchored in its own present, this "exhibition of dances" offers a shared in vivo experience which ties in with the overwhelming need to rethink the shapes and contours of what is common to us all.
Credits
Design, Jérôme Bel and Estelle Zhong Mengual
Assistant, Chiara Gallerani
Text, Jérôme Bel, Estelle Zhong Mengual; extract from Baptiste Morizot, Andrea Olga Mantovani, S'enforester, Paris, Éditions d'une Rive à l'Autre, 2022, p. 28.
Choreographies : Pina Baush – Nelken line, music West End Blues composed by Joseph Oliver, performed by Louis Armstrong; excerpt from the piece Nelken (The Carnations) (1982), choreography and direction Pina Bausch, set design Peter Pabst, costumes Marion Cito, dramaturgy Raimund Hoghe, collaboration Matthias Burkert, Hans Pop, music Jones, Lehar, Oliver, Tauber, Tucker and others ; performance rights Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt, in representation of the Pina Bausch Foundation, Wuppertal / Gaspard Charon / Isadora Duncan – Water study (approx. 1900), music by Frantz Schubert / Loïe Fuller - Danse serpentine (1892), music by Camille Saint Saens / Xavier Le Roy – Le vocabulaire des lions (2011) / Sergiu Matis – The Siberian crane, from the piece Extinction room (Hopeless.) (2019), concept and choreography by Sergiu Matis, sound composition by Antye Greie-Ripatti, text by Philip Ingman
Interpreters, Gaspard Charon, Sherwood Chen, Chiara Gallerani, Sabine Macher, Elisabeth Schwartz, Lisa Vilret
Costumes, the dancers
Artistic advice and executive direction R.B. Jérôme Bel, Rebecca Lasselin
Production R.B. Jérôme Bel
Administration Sandro Grando
Coproduction Musée du Louvre (Paris) ; Festival d'Automne à Paris ; CND Centre national de la danse (Pantin) ; Fonds de dotation du Quartz - Scène nationale de Brest ; Maison de la danse - Lyon, Pôle européen de création ; R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris)
With the help of the Ménagerie de verre (Paris) for the use of its rehearsal spaces
Thanks to Sébastien Allard, Cédric Andrieux et Raphaelle Delaunay/CNSMDP, Carolin Brandl/Choreographing Politic au Bode-Museum (Berlin), Salomon Bausch, Ismaël Dia et Annette Reschke/Pina Bausch Foundation, Ana Janevski/MoMA, Laetitia Dosch, Valérie Dréville, Claire Le Gouic, Anne Martin, Baptiste Morizot, Madeline Ritter
R.B. Jérôme Bel is supported by the Drac Île-de-France / Ministère de la Culture
Jérôme Bel is an associate artist of the Quartz - scène nationale de Brest and the CND Centre national de la danse (Pantin)
For ecological reasons, the company R.B. Jérôme Bel no longer travels by plane
The Musée du Louvre and the Festival d'Automne à Paris are coproducers of this show and present it in co-direction
