performed by julie guibert
music live :gerome nox
light installation : caty olive
stage manager : jean-michel hugo
production : l'association fragile
co-production : Montpellier Dance Festival - Centre National de la Danse de Pantin (creation in residency)
with the support of the Passerelle, scene nationale de Saint-Brieuc
“Fallen straight out of her gesture in a pair of high heels, the limpidity of lines even in suddenly suspended forward rolls. No uncertainty in firm hands, the dancer wins her gamble for perfection. Between performance and art installation, this piece exacerbates Rizzo’s style, his capacity to transform space into a precious zone where amnesiac whiteness sublimates bodies, objects, sounds and light. “
Rosita Boisseau, Télérama, 5 Décember 2007
For b.c, janvier 1545, fontainebleau, Christian Rizzo has reunited with his favorite cohorts, Caty Olive who creates the lighting environment of the piece, and Gerome Nox who creates its sound score - all focusing on a singular project.
The choreographer also reprises his talent as a model maker, creating a specific universe, shaped, custom-fit to Julie Guibert, a classical dancer he met at the Lyon Opera Ballet when he created Ni fleurs, ni ford mustang there in 2004.
Ms. Guibert has danced with many companies, ranging from the Ballet du Nord to the Ballet Cullberg, where she worked for several years, and more recently the companies of Russell Maliphant and Yves-Noel Genod.
She has experienced the creative universes of many different choreographers, among them Maguy Marin, Trisha Brown, William Forsythe, Mats Ek and Philippe Decoufle.
Rizzo is both fascinated by what he calls her "incredible intelligence onstage," and inspired by her personality.
He decided to continue working on the connection he felt to Ms. Guibert in creating this solo, in which he asks himself, "how do we look at a woman alone on stage, outside her own community"
He imagines a dance projected into space, nocturnal, carved by the lighting to "delve into the idea of slowness, shaping the calligraphic dimension of the movement."
In the background we intuit the questions revealed by these enigmatic images, of the links between memory and vision, of the ritual dimension of performance, and what it means to write, to create for another person.
Irene Filiberti
"(..) The cabinet of curiosity," its baroque history, is clearly present in the mind of the choreographer, and in particular in this piece. (...)It is like a sumptuous white jewel box containing a cluster of black abstract suspended objects, recycled materials from earlier works as well as new ones.
This brilliant setting, shimmering under the lighting of Caty Olive, set off by a soundscape by Gerome Nox, lays out a mysterious ritual.
A strange feast of the vanities, led by Rizzo, a surrealist figure beginning the ceremony, followed by a slowly danced solo by the ballet dancer Julie Guibert.
She is a willowy silhouette in black gloves and spike heels, her stylised gestures and slow steps, her curved, stretched and folding shapes a counterweight to the suspended objects, crystalised somewhere in space.
She is the only humanity visible in the whiteness of this void, and she commits herself fully to the strange ritual, this transmutation of the body.
We see lines, tightened threads of body trajectory, obscure graphs discreetly projected into space, suspending time, the body carefully stretched or released in its shapes, presenting its form like a live, partly carbonised sculpture.
remarks recorded by Irene Filiberti La Lettre de Kinem 9 (Sept - Dec. 07) from the Centre national de la danse
Saturation in perfection: Christian Rizzo at Montpellier Danse
Here Christian Rizzo presides over this simple celebration, focused on the slightly detached evolution of Julie Guibert, a veritable lexicon of dance perfection, heightened to the point of extravagance.
Her excellence in neoclassical verticality ramps up when she dances in dizzyingly high heels, sharpening the perspective on her arching back, the line of her daring imbalance.
The articulated sharpness of her movements through space, the patient reversal, down to the floor, of the methodical transfer of mass and edge, continue for the duration, no flameouts, no flourishes or extras.
Perfectly clean angles, lines, directions, velocity, deploying all imaginable paradoxes of the directional intentions in the space. All of it resonates with the plasticity of the structure, the sound and lighting at play.
A transmutational energy also.
The angling of a limb, a head thrown back, the feeling of a turn - all channeling the super density of echos in this utopic stage setting.
We do not know theoretically the foundation of these ideas, we are confronted with a perfect representation, the mastery of form. So much so it nearly suffocates, saturates us.
Is there room for anything impure?
Gerard Mayen - Mouvement.net, July 2, 2007