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Présentation
Press
The Belgian choreographer Michèle Noiret immediately sweeps us off our feet in this lovely place in the Off - La Parenthèse – where she performs. (...) In the shaded courtyard of a private 19th century house, far from the work she does with cinema technology (...) she takes up a founding solo for our great pleasure, Solo Stockhausen (1997). And pulls from it this Palimpseste, which she intends to then pass on to a male dancer, David Drouard, who also appears at the end. Backed by Tierkreis, Stockhausen’s score in resonant lace for piano and clarinet, for thirty minutes she composes a long movement in which she comes across much more as a person who dances than a performer, so much so that the dance is written on her as her own language. At first she advances in little urgent steps, whispering in silence, describing with her hands all possible curves, including microscopic ones. Then follows as much as she precedes these delicate assemblages of the most crystal-clear piano notes. Her body held, mastering slowness and transience, she cuts her body language with a remarkable lightness.”
Michèle Noiret arrives sublime. French twist, high-waisted trousers and small black top fitting close to the waist. She is the incarnation of chic and she will become a black queen. She tickles her fingertips and moves compulsively with very quick little steps. Her elegance turns to aridity in very forceful passages on the ground. She borders on madness while talking to herself, a frank look on her face. David Drouard offers her a very masculine reading of this solo, establishing an anchored version of the movements. Here it is fascinating to see how the same movements are danced by different artists.”
While Stockhausen’s notes and silences resonate under the taut cloth over the terraces, Michèle Noiret jolts along the wall. (...) Here body connects with the mind. And vice versa. Packing in a language free-for-all. The hidden is revealed. The revealed is hidden. (...) Elegance dominates. Fluidity is her regular partner. Action and meditation make a natural match. (...) When the man, David Drouard, slips in, it’s a meeting with the other, the opposite, the complementary, the different. A bodily dialogue is devised. It creates harmony. It opposes solitude. A particular beauty forms. And we are amazed when it cannot last, again, last…»
Seen at OFF 2015: Michèle Noiret
The encounter with the work of the too infrequently seen choreographer and dancer Michèle Noiret, in the south of France, was one of the beautiful moments of this festival. When the virtuosity of movement meets the musical rigour of Kharlheinz Stockhausen. Rewind. “When Michèle Noiret crosses and advances into the very interior of Palimpseste, searching for the right movement to transcribe the very essence of the music, with its attempted writing of movements and their repetition, one experiences at first hand the madness that can seize such an initiative. What makes this wrist movement or that annotation on the body correct? Her dance embraces Stockhausen’s musical style and creates a paradigm. Everything is semiotic here and when David Drouard joins her on the boards a mirror effect is created. The similitude and not the mimicry in the movements puts the transmission into perspective and, when the one who seems to be the student becomes almost the choreographer of this new style, while respecting the composer’s notes, one tells oneself that the historians of dance have a new field to observe and that the audience is not yet done with discovering and rediscovering this variation on infinity. Michèle Noiret has been able to find in David Drouard someone who will question once again Stockhausen’s vertiginous, oh and how, musical style. And it’s here a new chapter is written with Palimpseste Solo/Duo."
Those who were lucky enough to see Solo Stockhausen in Dijon during the Art Danse festival in 1998 will recognise the dancer’s virtuosity in Palimpseste. A very precise body language of arms, wrists and hands, a dance as suspended in a breath of air. The choreographer revisits her solo in thirty minutes of pure dance to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Tierkreis. The German composer, a pioneer of electronic music who she met aged 16, with whom she studied this so characteristic gestural notation and with whom she worked as a soloist for 15 years. It’s from him she gets this astounding rapidity of hand movement, as shown in the film Solo by film director Thierry Knauff screened after the dance. On stage or on screen, Michèle Noiret dances Stockhausen’s music, translating with the body the musical variations: a body language to be seen and seen again, like a score, for our greatest pleasure.”
Neither revival nor re-creation, Palimpseste is a piece formed from the rereading of existing works. Responsible for the stage design together with Xavier Lauwers, who also does the lighting, Michèle Noiret inscribes her black, slender figure, her playful, thoughtful advance, her restrained or turbulent responses on the white walls and stage, accompanied by the now sighing, now resounding tones of Tierkreis by Karlheinz Stockhausen – the composer at whose side, just after leaving Mudra, Maurice Béjart’s school, she studied gestural notation and worked as a soloist for some fifteen years. At work and in suspension, time as matter..."
Cast & credits
Conception, choreography, interpretation Michèle Noiret
Music Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Tierkreis" for clarinet and piano, interpreted by Majella Stockhausen and Suzanne Stephens
Scenography Xavier Lauwers, Michèle Noiret
Light design Xavier Lauwers
Costumes Azniv Afsar, Michèle Noiret
Sound and light operator Xavier Lauwers
Technical direction Christian Halkin
Photography Sergine Laloux
Production and tour manager Claire Geyer
Communication and press Alexandra de Laminne
Administration and coordination Cathy Zanté
Duration 30 minutes
Production Compagnie Michèle Noiret/Tandem asbl.
Coproduction & residence Scène nationale 61, Alençon.
Produced with the support of the Ministère de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service de la Danse.
The Compagnie Michèle Noiret is subsidised by the Ministère de la Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service de la Danse, and receives regular support from Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI).