• Dimanche, 31 janvier, 2021 - 16:0017:30

Lessons of a virus #5 : Boris Charmatz

© Boris Charmatz

On terrain, a choreographic institution without walls nor roof

 

In the work of choreographer Boris Charmatz, reflecting about the structures or institutions that are built around the art of dance or art in general, has always been important. With his project Bocal(2003-2004) he installed a temporary nomadic school in order to re-examine the modalities of training in dance. From 2009 until 2018 he was the artistic director of the Musée de la Danse in Rennes, an experiment in rethinking the most iconic of French dance institutions: the Centre Chorégraphique. It was an unconventional crossbreeding between a museum as a space for preservation, dance as the art of motion, and a choreographic centre as a space for production and residences. With Terrain, his latest endeavour, he is researching the possibilities of setting up a choreographic centre without walls, without a roof, in brutal and direct relation to its natural and urban surroundings.

 

Born on January 3rd 1973, in Chambéry, France

Dancer, choreographer, and director of Terrain, Boris Charmatz subjects dance to formal constraints which redraw the field of possibilities. The stage is a notepad where to draft concentrated, organic concepts in order to observe the chemical reactions, intensities, and tensions engendered by their encounter. During 2009 - 2018 he is the director of Musée de la danse / Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne. He is the author of a series of landmark shows, from Aatt enen tionon(1996) to 10000 gestes (2017), in addition to his activity as a performer and improviser (in collaboration with Médéric Collignon, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and Tino Sehgal). As an associate artist of the 2011 edition of the Avignon Theatre Festival, Boris Charmatz created enfant. Performed at the Cour d’Honneur at the Palais des Papes, the piece involved 26 children and 9 adult dancers. It was restaged at the Volksbühne in 2018 with a group of Berlin children. Invited to the MoMA in 2013, Boris Charmatz staged Musée de la danse: Three Collective Gestures, a three-part program performed at the museum over the course of three weeks. Following an invitation in 2012, Boris Charmatz was once again hosted by Tate Modern in London in 2015, where he presented If Tate Modern was Musée de la danse? The show included alternate versions of the choreographic projects À bras-le-corps; Levée des conflits; manger; Roman Photo; expo zéro; and 20 Dancers for the XX Century. That same year, Boris Charmatz opened the dance season at the National Opera in Paris with 20 Dancers for the XX Century, and invited 20 dancers from the Ballet to perform twentieth-century solo parts in public spaces at the Palais Garnier. For the third time in Rennes, Boris Charmatz will present Fous de danse May 6, 2018, at the Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle. The project is an open invitation to experience dance in all its forms and through all practices, from noon to 10PM. In 2017, this project toured to the Ateliers des Capucins (Brest), to the landing strip of the former Tempelhof airport (Volksbühne Berlin), and to Centquatre-Paris. Charmatz is the author of several books, including Entretenir: à propos d’une danse contemporaine (Centre national de la danse / Les presses du reel, 2003), co-authored with Isabelle Launay; “Je suis une école”(Editions les Prairies Ordinaires, 2009), a work that retraces the adventure with Bocal; and Emails 2009–2010 (Les presses du réel, in partnership with the Musée de danse, 2013), co-authored with Jérôme Bel.