NOBOLERO
INTERVIEW
with choreographer CHANTAL YZERMANS by Sylvia Zade Routier,
Por La Danza, December 2015
'An exploration of Breath'
SZR: Why the title NoBolero?
CYZ:
It is, in fact, a kind of “diversion” of the copyright attached to Maurice Béjart’s Boléro, or more precisely, an “appropriation” of this iconic choreography, because what we see on stage is not Béjart’s Boléro, but rather a choreography displaced in a historical sense. I dance it four times in succession in a completely fragmented manner,.
SZR: The very first appearance already seems magical, since a luminous dress appears to dance on its own in the darkness…
C.Y.:
Designer Jean-Paul Lespagnard drew inspiration from the first costume created by Alexandre Benois in 1930 for Boléro. It was a traditional dress whose original design Lespagnard preserved, but he cut it from fluorescent fabric, giving it a ghostly appearance.
SZR: You introduce an unexpected figure on stage: Dr. Joëlle Adrien, a neurologist at INSERM. Could you explain her role?
C.Y:
I would answer by asking: in Art, must everything really be explained? Must it really be understood? I prefer a sensory approach, especially in this work, whose content is deeply hypnotic. This brings us to Hypnos—sleep—which lies at the heart of Dr. Joëlle Adrien’s scientific research.
During my residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (January–June 2014), I began developing this new project in collaboration with Dr. Joëlle Adrien, a neuroscientist specializing in sleep and head of a research group at INSERM and the Faculty of Medicine at Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris. For more than thirty years, Dr. Adrien has been conducting research at La Salpêtrière on sleep behavior in newborns and fetuses.
Our conversations began with a series of questions: When are dreams born? Is dreaming an objective or a subjective activity? Can sleep be understood as a passive form of resistance—through deprivation, failure, or disobedience? Can the sleeping self be controlled? Can dreams enable self-creation? Does sleep contain critical moments marked by loss of control and subjectivity?
Her answers were astonishing, reaching back to the very origins of dreaming in the fetus. This experience, this ancestral ritual, is universal and therefore concerns us all. That is where its strength lies.
SZR: Is the Boléro itself not also a ritual?
C.Y.:
Indeed. Through its repetitive form, it leads to an initiatory crescendo, like breathing itself, culminating in the breath of life.
SZR: You had previously worked on breathing in Totem Ancestor, presented at the Istanbul Art Fair. Once again, because of copyright issues, you danced behind the theater curtain, where only your amplified breathing could be heard, streamed simultaneously on a Turkish radio station. Totem Ancestor was originally choreographed by Merce Cunningham in 1942. As with Béjart’s Boléro, you are revisiting an iconic work.
C.Y.:
Yes, because these works are indispensable cornerstones. In these two specific cases, appropriating such works is both a challenge and an artistic gesture that pays tribute to two great artists. But it is also a means of transmitting a living repertoire. I consider Boléro a living organism. One of the questions at the heart of my research is: How does a work continue to live through other bodies? Dance, for me , movement and repertoire is not a fixed matter. It is constantly transformed through transmission. Each performer inherits a memory of the work while giving it a new life. What interests me is not reconstructing an original, but investigating how a choreography survives, evolves, and remains alive through the bodies that carry it.
SZR: But insisting on breathing to the point of making it the focus of the performance—that is your own contribution?
C.Y.: It is a form of personal research that draws upon a concrete work but goes beyond a certain limit. I position myself somewhere between theater and performance art, where the expressiveness of movement returns to its primary source—in this case, breathing.
SZR: But can breathing alone on stage really be enough?
C.Y.: In the way I use it, yes. Breathing is breath, and breath is life. It is the first manifestation of a newborn. A dancer is entirely dependent on the quality of their breathing, which is why I place so much emphasis on it, since movement itself is carried by breath. Choreographers such as Anna Halprin, Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, José Limón, Pina Bausch, and Trisha Brown have always incorporated breath artistically into their creations.
In NoBolero, I place the emphasis on breath because, in dance, theatrical gesture originates from it. Moreover, breath belongs only to oneself—it is like a fingerprint. There are therefore no “copyrights” on one’s own breathing. This brings us back to what Dr. Joëlle Adrien says about REM sleep, which is the only state in which each person is truly different. In NoBolero, there is a progression of the senses toward the immateriality of breath. I pass through several historical and sensory stages in order to arrive, in the end, at the very essence of dance—and of life itself: breath.
SZR: Does this approach resemble a similar search in painting, for example Robert Ryman’s White Square within White Square?
C.Y.: Yes, because I remove everything… in order to arrive at the essential.
SZR: So it is a concept?
C.Y.: I would rather say that it is Poetry.
Interview by Sylvia Zade-Routier
Madrid, December 2015
Concept Chantal Yzermans Original Music Bolero by Maurice Ravel
Duration 60’
Lecture Performance Dr. Joelle Adrien Live Music MADMOIZEL
Costume Design Jean Paul Lespagnard
Light Design Elke Verachtert / Chantal Yzermans
Production Radical Low / Centre Pompidou Metz (FR)
Co-Production Jan Fabre/Troubleyn (BE) Kultuurfaktorij Monty (BE) Takt Dommelhof (BE)
With the support of
the Flemish Community /Internationale Werken
Residencies
Kunstencentrum Vooruit (BE) Teatros del Canal (ES)
Cité Internationale des Arts Paris (FR)
Performance History
Monty Kunstencentrum, Antwerp (BE) Centre Pompidou Metz, Metz (FR)
Photography Laetitia Bica