title : Jérôme Bel  

text and videos : Jérôme Bel
assistant : Maxime Kurvers
with : Frédéric Seguette, Claire Haenni, Gisèle Pelozuelo, Yseult Roch, Olga De Soto, Peter Vandenbempt, Sonja  Augart, Simone Verde, Esther Snelder, Nicole Beutler, Eva Meyer Keller, Germana Civera, Benoît Izard, Ion Munduate, Cuqui Jerez, Juan Dominguez, Carine Charaire, Hester Van  Hasselt,  Dina Ed Dik, Amaia Urra, Carlos Pez, Henrique  Neves, Johannes Sundrup, Véronique Doisneau, Damian Bright, Matthias Brücker, Remo  Beuggert, Julia Häusermann, Tiziana Pagliaro, Miranda Hossle, Peter Keller, Gianni Blumer, Matthias Grandjean, Sara Hess, Lorraine Meier, Simone Truong, Akira Lee, Aldo Lee, Houda Daoudi, Cédric Andrieux, Chiara Gallerani, Taous Abbas, Stéphanie Gomes, Marie-Yolette Jura, Nicolas Garsault, Vassia Chavaroche, Magali Saby, Ryo Bel, Sheila Atala, Diola Djiba, Michèle Bargues, La Bourette, Catherine Gallant
images : Herman Sorgeloos, Marie-Hélène Rebois, Aldo Lee, Pierre Dupouey, Olivier Lemaire, Chloé Mossessian

production of the videos : CN D Centre national de la danse, Opéra national de Paris/Telmondis in association with France 2 with the participation of Mezzo et du Centre national de la cinématographie, R.B. Jérôme Bel/Theater Hora, French Institute Alliance Française - FIAF
 
production of the performance : R.B. Jérôme Bel
coproduction : Ménagerie de Verre (Paris), La Commune centre dramatique national d’Aubervilliers, Festival d’Automne à Paris, R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris)
the writing of the text of this performance is part of the creative process of Sustainable theatre ?, conceived by Katie Mitchell, Jérôme Bel and Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, and coproduced by STAGES - Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift cofunded by European Union: Dramaten Stockholm, National Theater & Concert Hall, Taipei, NTGent, Piccolo Teatro di Milano -Teatro d'Europa, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II Lisboa, Théâtre de Liège, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, Croatian National Theatre Zagreb, Slovene National Theatre Maribor, Trafo Budapest, MC93 Maison de la culture de Seine-Saint-Denis

thanks to : Caroline Barneaud, Daphné Biiga Nwanak, Jolente De Keersmaeker, Zoé De Sousa, Florian Gaité, Chiara Gallerani, Danielle Lainé, Xavier Le Roy, Marie-José Malis, Frédéric Seguette, Christophe Wavelet

duration : about 2 h
the performance contains nudity
 
R.B Jérôme Bel is supported by the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d'Ile-de-France, French Ministry for Culture.
Jérôme Bel is associated artist to Le Quartz – scène nationale de Brest and to Centre national de la danse (Pantin)
For ecological reasons, R.B. Jérôme Bel company doesn't travel by plane anymore.

R.B. Jérôme Bel :
artistic advice and executive direction : Rebecca Lasselin
production manager : Sandro Grando
website : www.jeromebel.fr

With Isadora Duncan, Jérôme Bel drew up the danced portrait of a choreographer for the first time, after having concentrated exclusively on the life of the dancers. For this new creation, which he describes as "auto-bio-choreo-graphic", he lends himself to his own exercise and delivers his personal account of a life of dance.

Where the film Retrospective operated a transversal cut in the work of Jérôme Bel, this creation reconstitutes its linear logic, declined according to a necessarily subjective glance. The choreographer's performance address, alone on stage, responds to the broadcasting of filmed archives and reactivates the memory of gestures, scores, and biographical facts that the discourse comes to put in correspondence. The eponymous project of a founding piece of his repertoire, Jérôme Bel is not so much a return to the initial point, nor even an assessment made after the fact, as a genealogy of the driving forces of his work, where the personal is linked to the artistic and political. Jérôme Bel tells his story for the first time, sharing his doubts, his commitments, his failures as well as his infatuations. Combining narrative and meaning, the piece articulates fragments of his life, his career and his intellectual project to reveal their common structures.

Florian Gaité, for the Festival d’Automne à Paris, 2021