PRATICABLE

Alice Chauchat, Frédéric de Carlo, Frédéric Gies, Isabelle Schad, Odile Seitz

photo: Bruno Pocheron
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BIOs

DANCE (praticable) Frédéric Gies
The project/The piece: “Dance (Praticable)” is based on a score that can be interpreted as a solo or in a group. This piece, which consists in a contraband of choreographic styles produced out of a work on the bodily origins of movement, questions and destabilizes the notions of style and authorship within the choreographic field. First, ”Dance (Praticable)” has existed in the shape of a solo and continues to exist like this. An excerpt of the piece has been presented several times by groups of 3 and 4 people, and by a group of 13 people. The full length piece will be presented by a group of 10 dancers in October 2008 in Berlin at Sophiensaele. At the same time, a publication of the score will be distributed for free to whom wants to dance the piece. A website will also offer the possibility to download the score. In December 2006, I created “Dance (Praticable)”, in its solo shape, after a proposal of Alice Chauchat. Nevertheless, the project hadn’t its final shape yet. I had still to conceive what gives to it a complete coherence. In “Dance (Praticable)”by focusing on bodily origins of movement, I question the notions of authorship and style, as well as the tools of production of forms, by integrating the idea that the process which produces a form determines its meaning and its content. The body practice becomes the main tool to generate dance and choreography. The deployment and the association of very contrasted movement qualities and body states, produced by inner changes of attention, establish the structure allowing the choreography to appear.
				photo: Ivo Hofste

The notion of style is deconstructed. By the same type of process, i.e. by seeking in the material of the body what can motivate the emergence of a movement, various choreographic styles (attributable to an author or to nobody in particular) appear, are juxtaposed and interpenetrate one another without judgment. These styles, by the way they are generated, are not reproduced but embodied, what allows me to propose a particular gaze on dance practice and history. Indeed, these styles appear not as reproduced forms, belonging to a choreographer, or to a choreographic current, but as possible body states. They become only possibilities of expression and communication, changes of tonus, of focus, of state and dynamic. Thus, their deployment and the way they are produced play with the memory of the spectator.

On the other hand, we can also read this contraband of choreographic styles as a way of criticizing the definition of the solo as stylistic assertion of the choreographer. Who is the author of these styles? Because there is here neither copy, nor plagiarism, nor reproduction of an original. The dancer doesn’t produce these forms from their image but from the material of his body (his muscles, his organs, his fluids, his bones, etc.). He is moving from the inside and lets appear the forms that come out. He becomes in this sense the origin of all these styles. Thus, it is a question of putting in dialogue heterogeneous elements in order to produce a circulation of meanings. This would not be possible if I had conceived this solo as an assertion of my own choreographic style. I wanted to conceive this solo as one possibility of circulation of meanings and the forms.

It is exactly here where it was necessary to complete my project. I had to create the necessary conditions to amplify this circulation. Thus, I decided to put on paper the score of “Dance (Praticable)”, in order to make this piece possible to be performed by other people. This score consists in some recommendations of physical practices allowing to acquire certain necessary tools to dance this piece, as well as in a chronological description of the various places of initiation of movements. I also give some spatial, temporal and musical indications. It was also necessary to establish the following rule (because of the nature of the score and of the project): who dances this score becomes co-author of the choreography. Then, various possibilities are offered to whom wants to dance this piece: dancing it as a solo or as a group piece. In the case of a group version, the piece becomes a unison that has nevertheless nothing to do with a “corps de ballet”. Each interpreter of the score, by the processes of embodiment that constitute his interpretation, becomes the author of the choreography, making his own choices within this structure.

This piece takes also different dimensions whether it is danced in solo or in group, the group version allowing a gaze on community, and on organization within a group, horizontal organization in this particular case.
Finally, if this piece consists in this destabilization of the notions of authorship and styles, it couldn’t be only my propriety. It has to be disseminated and can fully exist only by circulating. Thus, the score will be published, and this book will be available for free, in the theaters where we’ll perform, and also in various dance institutions. It will be also possible to download the score from a website. This publication will also contain several theoretical texts about themes linked to the piece (as scores, authorship, open source, body practices).