Several voices

 

For this constellation-like format Portrait, the choreographer François Chaignaud brings audiences a series of pieces written via collaborative process, in which he pits his body against other forms of knowledge, rhythms, and imaginary worlds. The diffrerent works have come about in response to various encounters and their contrasting aesthtics, such as with the artist Théo Mercier, Butoh dancer Akaji Maro, the dancer and artist Cecilia Bengolea, beatboxer Aymeric Hainaux, the harpsichordist Marie-Pierre Brébant, and the artist and musician Nina Laisné. This multi-format corpus of work, an affiramtion of the power of the minor and hybridisation, unfurls an artisitc prohect which plunges deep into the roots of a myriad of cultures, whilst affirming the radical eqaulity of the gesture itself and song. From underground car-parks to broad stages, balletic pointes to the steps of baroque dances, and South American laments to Medieval plainchant, François Chaignaud unravels the thread of dominant narratives in order to render audible the accents of a very different music, one which is celestial and wild. 

 

 

This Portrait has been developped on the basis of combined efforts. What is the importance of collaboration in the evolution of your work?

François Chaignaud: Collaboration has been an intrinsic part to my approach to dance since childhood. The gesture is born from the encounter itself. Dance isn't only self-expression, from the Inside to the outside, it's also about asking ourselves: how can we allow the world to come into us? Over the course of my experience, this has enabled me to be receptive to the dreams, visions, and fantasies of the artists whose paths I've crossed. I became aware that allowing myself to enter fully into the ideas of others does not take away from me my own capacity to cerate. And the variety of choreographic styles which it produces is indissociable from the artists with whom I work. Nina Laisné brought me into contact with jota and malambo teachers, and Marie-Pierre Brébant gave me the opportunity to discover neumes (the earliest forms of musical notation, used from the 9th to the 12th century, and which represent musical gestures and dynamics). The experience of taking in the ideas of someone else sets in motion a process of transformation and incarnation, and which corresponds to how I see the creative act. 

 

How do you see this Portrait, in terms of how it reflects your diffrerent approcahes to creating work?

In my own practice, each piece does not drive away the other. It's more a case of sedimentation, in that with each new collaboration, the different versions of myself accumulate, layer by layer. Over the course of the last twenty years, I have been developing a sense of fluidity whichh enables me to go from one piece to another, and from one body to another, in accordance with the tour. But the audience does not have access to this versatility. Here, all the diffrernt pieces will be presented in Paris. This Portrait makes visible the possibiliy of our bodies transformaing in infnite way. It is a reflction of my faith in dance, in that it forces the various assignations that soceity imposes on our bodies, about what they can or cannot do, to lie. Moreover, this programme, composed entirely of co-authored pieces, subverts what could be seen as the monumental character it might otherwise have within the Festival d’Automne’s line-up of events. As opposed to insiting on the subjectivitity of a singluar, omnipotent artist, it is a celebration of permeabilite,  multiplicite, collaboration and collective gestures.

 

You make use of numerous choreographic styles, from different folklores and cultures. How have you progressively set out about learning these various styles? 

 

Putting myself in a position of constantly having to learn new things is a fundamental part of the creative process. Studying a new gesture, choregraphic style, or specific form of motricity takes for granted a practice of porosity and repetition. Rehearsals and reptition are sometimes seen as routine-like, mindless. I take the opposite view: by studying the gestures of others, and by repêating them over and over again, you uprrot yourself from the self-image you think you are condemned to. We rebuild ourselves giving rise to a multitude of possible different bodies within us. I'm fascinated by the plasticity of our bodies, and the way they contradict the rigid nature of identity-based assignations. 

 

Your work experiments with time, space and genres. How do you approach the idea of spectacle?

 

The stage and its frontality are conventions going back to a specifc period in time. I don't appraoch the process of making a show by saying to myself that I need to do away with it, but rather by bearing in mind the historic nature of this convention, its mechanisms and effects it produces. We will be presenting frontal pieces, such as GOLD SHOWER (with Akaji Maro), and Romances inciertos, un autre Orlando and Último helecho, made in colabration with Nina Laisné. At the same time, Mirlitons (with Aymeric Hainaux), Symphonia harmoniæ cælestium revelationum (with Marie-Pierre Brébant), Radio Vinci Park (Reloaded) (with Théo Mercier) and Sylphides (with Cecilia Bengolea) are pieces whichh transform in an explicit way certain paramters of theatrical convention. In terms of what the artistic operation itself does, there is of course the way in which the gestures are sculpted, and the different sounds refined… on other words everything that happens behind the closed doors of the sudio. But that only amounts to half the work. The way in which the dance is perceived by the other co-producer of gestures, the audience itself, is extremely important. In Mirlitons and Symphonia Harmoniæ, what we find is a way of "making the circle". The Sylphides take on a more mobile appaearance, in that it is a walkabout piece in the galeries of the Grand Palais, spread over two floors, whichh opens up the possibility of creating différent points of view. 

 

The music circulates feely in a transverzsal way, how did the intervention of bodies which dance and sing at the same time come about, and how have they become part of each projet ?

Music appeared in my pratice as a response to my unconsolabley melacnhoic realisatin that the histroy of dance is an very frail one, whichh is difficlut to write down. It is as though, in the absence of archive material, it could be summed up by the work of a handful of figures from the past, predominantly male ones… On the contrary, the realtion between music and the written form over the course of over the last thousand years in Europe gives access to a multitude of sources, and murmurs of different voices. Even if the history of music also has its shortfalls, the wealth of its remains which have been handed down to us is incomparable with that of dance. Music has enabled me to set in motion a dialogue with the ghosts of the bodies that produced it. This is why I turned to the art of vocal pracitce in the first place, based on the assumption that a vocal gesture and a physical one were quite close. In this Portrait, Mirlitonsis the only  musical piece where the score wasn't made before work itself. Aymeric Hainaux and I interact with each other in order to create sound and physical-based material of an extremely free nature. The scores make further deamnds on us: what is their relation with the bodies of those that have produced and perfrorm them? Today, how can our bodies be the vehicles for their work? Symphonia Harmoniæ is the most radical option, but also the most welcoming, apporaochable, in that we foolw the wole of Hildegard von Bingen, at least in terms of their manuscript. In Romances inciertos ou Último helecho, we explore different musical genres, but these pieces of msuic are also vehiciles situated on the basis of an historical and geogrpahoical point of view. What I look for is a total form of art in which dancing bodies, immersed in a kinetic and kinesthetic experience, can host sounds and songs that offer other, more explicitly decipherable layers of understanding and perception.

 

 

Interviw conducted by Gilles Amalvi, March 2025