Place:
Antiguo Cuartel de Artillería, Pabellón 2
Levée des Conflits, 2010 (avant-première)
Founder of Musée de la Danse in Rennes (France), Boris Charmatz presents a new dance installation, premiering at Manifesta 8 at the amphitheatre in Cartagena, where an ephemeral company of dancers performs and repeats an original form of "motionless choreography". Charmatz describes the performance as such: "Although everybody is in motion and form a huge, oscillating, hypnotic round, the whole installation does not move. It cannot exist without the bodies subtly activating it, but it produces an immaterial installation for a few hours that "do not pass", (in a cycle) in which one finds neither beginning nor end, no drama, no dramatics."
Boris Charmatz
Before becoming a dancer, Boris Charmatz was a table tennis player. Having entered the École de Danse de l¿Opéra de Paris, he has kept the game of speed and the art of feint. He begins dancing with Régine Chopinot (Ana and Saint-Georges), then joins Odile Duboc for 7jours/7villes, Projet de la matière and Trois Boléros (1996). A slow motion version of his duo-bolero with Emmanuelle Huynh will be presented for the prefiguration of the Musée de la danse ¿ Dancing Museum, 13 years later.
So Boris Charmatz is a dancer. Dimitri Chamblas too. In 1992, they founded the association edna. A bras-le-corps (1993) is the title of their first piece; it is also their way of catching dance. In Les Disparates (1994), a sculpture by Toni Grand appears next to them, without dancing. It weighs 800 kilos. Following his projects, things, often, dance in spite of themselves: notes, words, machines. With Aatt enen tionon (1996), he signs a vertical piece, with too many letters. herses (une lente introduction) (1997), assembles five rather naked dancers; a cello player punctuates the piece, on a musical score by Helmut Lachenmann. In 1999, he puts three words ¿ Con forts fleuve ¿ and jeans on his interpreters¿ heads, for the dance to move forward faceless. In héâtre-élévision, it is without stage and without T. The body is inside a television when it is inside a theatre. It is in the hands of a machine for Régi (2006): the machine manages the actions of Julia Cima and Boris Charmatz, and Raimund Hoghe manages the machine. In 2008, La danseuse malade is actress Jeanne Balibar, or Tatsumi Hijikata, founder of Butoh ¿ or both of them. Their ¿chest is congested by the wreckage of the times¿. Boris Charmatz is a truck, or inside a truck, or both.
Besides, Boris Charmatz is a dancer. He invents frames and puts ideas inside them. Angèle Le Grand too. Under their impulse, the association edna becomes a device for research and a tool box: edna organizes the programme Hors-série (La chaise and Visitations by Julia Cima, Jachères by Vincent Dupont), touring installations, like Programme court avec essorage, strange residences (Ouvrée - artistes en alpages); edna produces ideas, events, films (Les Disparates by César Vayssié, Horace Benedict by Dimitri Chamblas and Aldo Lee, Une lente introduction by Boris Charmatz). From 2002 to 2004, Boris Charmatz widens the frame of a residence at the Centre National de la Danse in Pantin, and stimulates the project Bocal ¿ a nomadic and ephemeral school, to pass on without a master. edna, Bocal, then the Musée de la danse: each one of these frames is the chance to open up the ways of producing, of passing on, and of reflecting about dancing.
Indeed, Boris Charmatz is a dancer. With Isabelle Launay, he writes Entretenir/à propos d¿une danse contemporaine (Centre national de la danse/ Les Presses du Réel/ 2003). ¿Je suis une école¿ (¿I Am a School¿), published by Les Prairies Ordinaires, is a laboratory-book signed in the name of many. Inside, one finds Bocal, Roland Barthes, musical scores, quotations, and schools in development.
Boris Charmatz is also a dancer. He improvises regularly with Saul Williams and his voice, Archie Shepp and his saxophone, Médéric Collignon and his trumpet, or also Steve Paxton. When he doesn¿t improvise, he is also an interpreter for Odile Duboc, Fanny de Chaillé, Pierre Alféri and Meg Stuart.
Since 2009, Boris Charmatz is a dancer. With objects, bodies, places, archives. Appointed director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne, he transforms it into a Musée de la danse. This Dancing Museum is a place and an idea: a space that can travel around (editions of expo zéro in Saint Nazaire, Singapore, Utrecht), and an idea to protect from time (préfiguration), debates (expo zéro), exhibitions (héliogravures), writings and voices (rebutoh), performances, screenings, discussions (Grimace du réel), and sometimes even, works
