Installation on 4 screens
A dance film? A filmed dance? Or phantom choreography seeking, in the very nature of movement, the confused matter of its imagination?
In 2016, Boris Charmatz created danse de nuit, night dance, a nocturnal performance for urban space, the choreographic material for which fills the film Daytime Movements. The film installation, created by the artist Aernout Mik in collaboration with the choreographer Boris Charmatz, places us at the limits: in this “daytime dance,” where the disorder of bodies blends with the everyday surroundings, every gesture conceals or reveals other uncanny signs.
“In interior silence and withdrawal, the dancers seem to forget themselves and are one with objects and landscapes, caught in a hypnotic trance that extends to the audience through the immersive character of the installation. The violence of the gesture also sends an emotional jolt, challenging passive and active positions. The camera films by coming closer or becoming detached, thus constructing its own language and montage, setting its own rhythm. The collaboration also involves taking the risk of a search that is carried out in the territory of the other.”
The New National Museum of Monaco, Visitor’s Guide, 2016.
AERNOUT MIK : The work Daytime Movements is a very improvised work of Boris Charmatz and me. Out of admiration of each others’ work we tried to set up an experimental situation where our ways of working would encounter and maybe fuse. Boris is trying things out for a new choreographie, from within the set, he is taking part in it at the same time. and I am directing all from the outside again. This situation was from the beginning on purpose incoherently. In this way no one was in full control any more of the situation and on the spot new solutions had to be found. You could call this in a way a violent act, order was constantly desintegrating, it created tensions, and out of this structure-less situation everyone (involving both protagonists and crew) had to invent new beginnings of collectivity. Into this very local, and detached situation,some ghost-like images entered, that could be traces from the current violence and threats in europe left in our collective consciousness. Without ever talking about this in an overly direct sense in the piece.
BORIS CHARMATZ : Violence? I don’t know. The project was not « about » violence, or even about anything?! I started with a huge desire and admiration towards Aernout Mik’s work. With the big problem being that choreography was already there in his artworks, almost invisible, present in the subtile tuning of chaos. Adding « professional » dancing bodies and « traditionnal" choreographic dramaturgy could destroy this art of tuning mouvement in seemingly improvised situations… we decided that I could play a choreographer within a group of dancers mixed with extras, in two very special locations. That a live rehearsal could take place, where I could try to do my role as a choreographer, visible in the films, but not more important than any other role.
And this is probably where what you called violence enters. I had prepared some choreographic ideas and materials to be tried out, but within a few minutes after the first shooting started, it was clear that « we » could not achieve anything like organizing an impromtu choreography, preparing a real set of steps… in these heavy conditions of the cold and wet outdoor parking place, with ground covered by mud and dirt, with a dog sneaking in and an artist (Aernout) giving contradictory indications than the ones I was trying to formulate within the scene, the « impossible » condition of choreography became the actual support. One could say the violence, or the roughness of the ungraspable dream of a group to achieve a moving collective became « the » thing. As one of the pictured body, I felt that failure, difficulty, impossibility, rage, blindfolded directorship, was my score, more than any other preplanned choreographic score. We were performing an impossible search. Each of the actor, cameramen, filmmaker, dancer, dog, car passing, body in the scene tried to find a way to be here, in a collective move of all people involved. For me there was a positive violence of the « letting go » of all sort of preconceived choreographic desires. We felt as if everybody had to let go his/her preplanned desires to experiment freely in this temporary situation where all roles were blurred. During these long periods of trying, failing, and going on, came some hunting moments. Using the pseudo-forest of the parking to suddenly make a hunter’s group, holding guns, using them. Shooting in the emptyness, at a time were terror through attacks was more and more present in France and Europe. Some ghosts of the present times joined us?! But could I say that violence was there? Not sure. Trying, all of us, together and appart, to find a way to exist in a place, in a film, in a strange group, in France, in Europe, surrounded by a rising violence and rage, but doing what was after all only art, free of all considerations on goals and themes?
More information about danse de nuit.
Length: 30’19’’ (2 screens) and 25’11’’ (2 screens)
Gilles Amalvi, Pascale Autret, Ronan Barbedor, Nuno Bizarro, Marine Bouilloud, Fabrice Bouvais, Ashley Chen, Carole Contant, Matthieu Doze, Olga Dukhovnaya, Peggy Grelat-Dupont, Jean-Charles Foubert, Jolie N’gemi, Marion Régnier, Caroline Roger, Kaya Sasaki and a dog
The piece is recommended for an informed public.
Direction assistant: Marjoleine Boonstra
Set designer: Elsje De Bruijn
Cameramans: Benito Strangio, Istvan Imreh, Aldo Lee
Cameramans assistants: John Dekker, Hugues Forget, Lisa Moullec, Erik Wiedenhof
Location manager: Jean-Charles Foubert assisté d’Angèle Laroche
Dresser: Marion Régnier
Production direction: Amélie-Anne Chapelain, Sandra Neuveut, Chantal Nissen
Production: Chantal Nissen and Musée de la danse / Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne – Direction: Boris Charmatz. Association supported by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication (Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles / Bretagne), the city of Rennes, the regional Council of Brittany and the General Council of Ille-et-Vilaine.
The Institut français contributes regularly to the international touring of the Musée de la danse.
Thanks to: Action Ouest, la Chambre des Notaires, Citédia, Théâtre national de Bretagne
Courtesy: Carliergebauer, Berlin
Created in 2016