Knitting enthusiasts know it well: a single missed stitch and the whole work will remain irreparably wobbly. This speck of dust capable of stopping the most oiled mechanics is the polymorphic atom that stirs up the unclassifiable. Same by the choreographer Pierre Rigal. The bare set transports the audience to a studio where nine people work on a piece with a nebulous content: a real-false rehearsal pretext for a creation woven with humor and surprises.
The dancers first form a harmonious segment caught in a charming swing from which one of the performers suddenly escapes, stopped short by a limp, then a second, suspended after having missed a beat on the music. And the whole troop to stop to launch into improbable calculations.
This irresistible imbroglio around the accounts of the choreography is the first fragment of a crazy and highly amusing puzzle. We let ourselves be happily picked up by a series of gags, including the most childish processes: a musical loop that escapes all control, an accelerated sequence – jerky gestures and hasty vocal flows – with a perfect illusion, or more later a comical contagion of yawns.
Sweet madness orchestrated by Pierre Rigal
Beneath its wacky bazaar trappings, this sweet madness is masterfully orchestrated by Pierre Rigal who is always on the lookout for astonishment. Surrounded by eight artists with eclectic physique and characters, he uses the stage as a laboratory with a thousand secret vials, the body constituting the instrument of a game with innumerable combinations.
His dissection of the discrepancy progressively shifts the meaning of Same liberating laughterto a diffuse impression that probes the depths of the human condition. An interpreter is missing. “Something happened to me” says only the latecomer, indescribable Pierre Cartonnet, banana in hand and bonhomie slung over his shoulder. One ” thing “ ? Life no doubt, its fragility, and the urgency of celebrating it.
The communicative energy of Gallotta
It is precisely in the field of this joyful impatience, generosity in sharing, that Pierre Rigal joins Jean-Claude Gallotta, also on the bill at the Théâtre du Rond-Point. His latest creation, The day is dreamingtakes place in three « events », according to the concept of Merce Cunningham. Here, the dance tells nothing but outlines infinite horizons, multiplied by the music by Rodolphe Burger and the visual contribution of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.
If the garish aesthetics of the first costumes – leotards and unbecoming hoods – is confusing, their lightening over the course of the play acts as a subtle stripping of the leaves towards the essential. The very rock-coloured soundtrack, specially created by Rodolphe Burger, gives the dance an intense pulse.
Gallotta’s choreography summons the power of the group – no less than ten dancers moved by a bewildering energy – which he declines through constantly redistributed interactions. In the whirlwind of an uninterrupted movement, wild races follow implacable duets.
A fruitful legacy from Cunningham
Succession of goat jumps and flights of pirouettes amalgamate in a permanent explosion. Magic ingredient of this Day is dreaming : the poetic interludes hatched by Gallotta himself. A frail figure on the vast stage, he skips along with the memories of his youth, his first steps in Cunningham’s New York studio, where he discovered the power of dance abstraction.
A fruitful heritage which the choreographer has for more than forty years made an enchanting honey, like this return to the sources of immense freshness. Between the poetic intimacy offered by the choreographer and the impetuous beauty of his dancers, a regenerating breath carries the room, all cheered up in a huge smile.
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Two generations of choreographers
Jean-Claude Gallotta, director of the National Choreographic Center of Grenoble from 1984 to 2016, is one of the emblematic choreographers of the emergence of contemporary dance in France in the 1980s. Author of more than 80 choreographies, he continues his work with his company, the Groupe Émile Dubois .
Pierre Rigal started dancing after studying mathematical economics and a long practice of high level athletics. In 2003, he created his first solo and founded his company, Last Minute. He has since developed an unclassifiable universe between circus and dance, giving a large place to music.