title : Non human dances (2023)

conception : Jérôme Bel et Estelle Zhong Mengual
assistant : Chiara Gallerani

texts : Jérôme Bel, Estelle Zhong Mengual and extracts of 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. Extract of the piece: Nelken (Les oeillets) (1982), choreography and stage direction : Pina Bausch, scenography: Peter Pabst, costumes: Marion Cito, dramaturgy: Raimund Hoghe, collaboration: Matthias Burkert, Hans Pop, music: Jones, Lehar, Oliver, Tauber, Tucker and others. Copyights : Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt, for Pina Bausch Foundation, Wuppertal
• Gaspard Charon
• Isadora Duncan : Water study (approx. 1900), music : Frantz Schubert
• Loïe Fuller : Danse serpentine (1892), music : Camille Saint Saens
• Xavier Le Roy : The lions’ vocabulary (2011)
• Sergiu Matis : The Siberian crane. Extract of the piece : Extinction room (Hopeless.) (2019), concept and choreography : Sergiu Matis, sound composition : Antye Greie-Ripatti, text : Philip Ingman

 with : Gaspard Charon, Sherwood Chen, Chiara Gallerani, Sabine Macher, Elisabeth Schwartz, Lisa Vilret

costumes : the dancers

executive direction R.B. and artistic advice : Rebecca Lasselin
manager : Sandro Grando

approximative duration : 60 minutes.
the performance contains nudity.

production : R.B. Jérôme Bel
coproduction : Festival d’Automne à Paris, Musée du Louvre (Paris), Centre national de la danse, 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 Ménagerie de Verre (Paris), for providing studio spaces

thanks to Sébastien Allard, Cédric Andrieux et Raphaelle Delaunay/CNSMDP, Carolin Brandl/Choreographing Politic au Bode-Museum (Berlin), Salomon Bausch, Ismaël Dia and Annette Reschke/Pina Bausch Foundation, Claire Le Gouic, Anne Martin, Baptiste Morizot, Madeline Ritter.

R.B. Jérôme Bel receives the help of Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d'Île-de-France – Ministery of Culture.
Jérome Bel is associated artist to Le Quartz – scène nationale de Brest and to Centre national de la danse (Pantin)
www.jeromebel.fr

 

How do we bring the living world into the world of dance? How do we bring non-human lives into human bodies? It is this paradox that the choreographer Jérôme Bel and the art historian Estelle Zhong Mengual invite us to explore in the form of a guided tour, a stroll from dance to dance. Through several selected pieces belonging to the repertoire of Western art dance, the two curators question the different strategies invented by choreographers to tackle the seemingly impossible challenge of becoming bodies other than our own: plants, animals, natural elements.

Most of these ancient dances are shown from our present time: that of the ecological crisis. This "exhibition of dances" proposes to experience in vivo the relationships that choreographers have created with the living world, and thus to enrich our forms of sensitivity towards it, to dig a little deeper into its central place in our common world.