SHANGHAI BOLERO Triptych

TRIPTYch for 13 DANcERS
Recreation 2018 : Festival Contre Courant — Avignon

The Women (10)
Creation 2010 : Shanghai World Expo — Pavillon France
The Men (3)
Creation 2011 : Festival Montpellier Danse
The Women, the Men (13)
Création 2011 : Festival Montpellier Danse

This creation was ordered for the Shanghai World Expo 2010. It is built around the composition of Ravel’s “Boléro”, perceived here as a support, and it is presented in 3 choreographic forms.
I chose this work – of which Ravel said it was without music - for its simple, even banal, principle of composition, for its “cultural” dimension and its inclusion in the collective memory, on a dance level
as well as on a musical level: Few works have this rationale. I wish to juxtapose it as a support for new choreographic forms, treat its modernism and ours like a mirror. It is about revealing this work, seeing and perceiving it in a different way, giving dance and the body
different postures, approaching notions of sensuality, eroticism, by questioning the construction of emotions, and eventually, approaching “the mechanics of desire” from a technical point of view : This approach can be seen as a search for a live form which allows the materialisation of the image of
desire and fantasy. It is also about resituating the Boléro, questioning its place and its dimension in our perception of the world, questioning the notion of sacralization of the work. We will try to appropriate this work with
the process of construction/deconstruction, or at least conduct a dialogue with it, a way of desacralizing it, and also a way to give it a different life with a different body.
On the approach and the sources. With this creation I pursue the exploration of new subjects and regions by using guiding lines of an aesthetic which I continually enrich: the mechanics of the body, of bodies, precise movement
execution as a means of transcending perception, immobility as a universe and as another way of perceiving movement, the positioning of the body in the geometry of space and the positioning of the
geometry in the body, and nally, the body as a sign, as a producer of signs. But this project shall be conducted by, for, and about women. A few references as explanation: Along with the mechanics of the body mentioned above, I propose a research on the “mechanics of desire”
developed by Hans Bellmer and his studies, and the mechanics of the images he proposes. My attention is directed towards the technical aspect of Hans Bellmer’s research (complexity and
mechanical ingenuity of The Doll) as well as towards the images produced, photos and drawings. This material will be handed over to the dancers.
Didier Théron