title : Retrospective (2019)

concept : Jérôme Bel
assistants : Maxime Kurvers, Chiara Gallerani
images : Céline Bozon, Pierre Dupouey, Aldo Lee, Olivier Lemaire, Marie-Hélène Rebois
editing : Yaël Bitton, Oliver Vulliamy
dancers : Taous Abbas, Fanny Alton, Cédric Andrieux, Sheila Atala, Sonja Augart, Michèle Bargues, Jérôme Bel, Ryo Bel, Malik Benazzouz, Remo Beuggert, Nicole Beutler, Gianni Blumer, Céline Bozon, Damian Bright, Matthias Brücker, Carine Charaire, Vassia Chavaroche, Germana Civera, Houda Daoudi, Diola Djiba, Shadé Djiba, Olga De Soto, Véronique Doisneau, Juan Dominguez, Moussa Doukoure, Dina Ed Dik, Chiara Gallerani, Nicolas Garsault, Ito Glissant, Matthias Grandjean, Stéphanie Gomes, Claire Haenni, Julia Häusermann, Sara Hess, Olivier Horeau, Miranda Hossle, Benoît Izard, Cuqui Jerez, Marie-Yolette Jura, Peter Keller, Maxime Kurvers, La Bourette, Akira Lee, Aldo Lee, Françoise Legardinier, Lorraine Meier, Eva Meyer Keller, Ion Munduate, Henrique Neves, Tiziana Pagliaro, Gisèle Pelozuelo, Carlos Pez, Magali Saby, Oliviane Sarazin, Frédéric Seguette, Esther Snelder, Johannes Sundrup, Simone Truong, Pierre Tu, Amaia Urra, Peter Vandenbempt, Hester Van Hasselt, Simone Verde

with extracts of the performances :
- Jérôme Bel (1995) : recording of the performance at CND Centre national de la danse (Pantin) on January 12, 2005, production CND Centre national de la danse
- Shirtology (1997) : recording of the performance by Marie-Hélène Rebois, at Festival Montpellier Danse on July 6, 1999
- The show must go on (2001) : recording of the performance by Aldo Lee at Teatro Nacional São João (Porto) on December 12 to 14, 2001, production R.B. Jérôme Bel
- Véronique Doisneau (2004) : film directed by Pierre Dupouey and Jérôme Bel at Paris national Opéra on October 27 and 28, 2005, coproduction Paris national Opéra /Telmondis in association with France 2, with the participation of Mezzo and Centre national de la cinématographie
- Disabled Theater (2012) : recording of the performance by Aldo Lee and Jérôme Bel at Schauspielhaus (Zürich) on March 14 to 16, 2014, production Theater Hora/ R.B. Jérôme Bel
- Gala (2015) :
Moonwalk, film directed by Jérôme Bel at La Commune centre dramatique national d’Aubervilliers on May 20, 2018, production : Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand Palais, Paris in the frame of the exhibition Michael Jackson : On the Wall - 2018/2019. 
Company Company, film directed by Jérôme Bel at Studio Abel 14 (Ivry sur Seine) on September 4, 2016, production : R.B. Jérôme Bel

production : R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris)
coproduction : Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), La Commune centre dramatique national d’Aubervilliers, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Festival d’Automne à Paris
thanks to : CND Centre national de la danse (Pantin), Opéra national de Paris, Telmondis (Paris), Theater Hora (Zürich), La Bâtie (Genève), Jean-Gabriel Périot, Didier Bastide
With the support of Ménagerie de Verre (Paris) in the framework of Studiolab
In 2019, Retrospective was selected at FID Festival International de Cinéma Marseille.

duration : 1 h 22
Retrospective contains nudity.

R.B Jérôme Bel is supported by the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d'Ile-de-France, French Ministry for Culture, by the Institut Français, French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, for its international tours and by ONDA - Office National de Diffusion Artistique - for its tours in France
R.B. Jérôme Bel :
artistic advice and executive direction : Rebecca Lasselin
production manager : Sandro Grando
website : www.jeromebel.fr

For his twentieth piece, rather than trying to produce something new, Jérôme Bel casts a subjective eye over his previous works through a twofold gesture of compilation and liaison of filmed images. Going back through his video archives, he takes out twenty dances from his most significant shows and organizes them among themselves in order to re-construct the development of his thinking about dance. The result is a 82-minute video projected on a screen, without any living presence. Retrospective thus makes a cross section within his corpus, the better to bring out his central preoccupations (body, language, culture, power, vulnerability…), by focusing on the issue of linkage between dance and politics. The desire for emancipation, the group’s active strength, and the deconstruction of social identities are here assumed like so many guidelines for his work. The chronological arrangement of these extracts makes it possible to implicitly draw up a portrait of the choreographer which is as sensitive as it is conceptual. For ecological reasons, R.B/ Jérôme Bel company doesn't travel by plane anymore. The video medium of "Retrospective" allows nevertheless its international tour

Florian Gaité for Festival d’Automne à Paris, 2019