Under the sky of Avignon, the music of the bodies

Story Water

by Emanuel Gat

Courtyard of the Palais des Papes, Avignon

For all artists who venture there one day, the papal palace's main courtyard is a vast continent to conquer. The choreographer Emanuel Gat has decided to leave this mythical stage naked, only covered with an immaculate carpet, whiteness of which are also dressed the ten dancers and twelve musicians of the Ensemble Modern. Absence of color, lack of decoration, which gives the two languages ​​used here – dance and music – the opportunity to unfold fully, modeled by a light finely worked, as always, by the choreographer himself.

Emanuel Gat, purity and openness

With Story Water, Emanuel Gat reaffirms its singularity in the contemporary choreographic landscape. Complete artist – dancer, musician, scenographer … – he continues to develop a subtle and profound choreographic writing. At the origin of this new play, a text by the Sufi poet Rumi, which begins: "A story is like water …" unfolding the metaphor of a unifying water.

Emanuel Gat, both conductor and sculptor

The show, cut into four paintings, opens with the longest of them on a composition by Pierre Boulez, Dérive 2 . At the first notes, the ten dancers are divided into two groups as the two staves of the same score. At first glance, for the eye as for the ear, there arises an impression of disorder beyond which a complex structure will emerge more and more clearly.

It bears the mark of creation of Emanuel Gat who for several years has abandoned the idea of ​​transmitting figures imposed on interpreters for the benefit of their own material. At the same time conductor and sculptor, starting from a process of which he does not reveal the secrets, he makes emerge in studio what will compose the piece. At the heart of his research: the interaction between the dancers in a space constantly redrawn by their movements

A choreography constantly recreated

At each performance, everything seems to be replayed on stage as in the river of Heraclitus where the impermanence of things reigns. With their verbal and visual exchanges, which may be enough to destabilize the audience, the performers do not repeat a choreography, but relive and recreate it incessantly, giving it a unique depth in the moment. They draw their vocabulary in a fluctuating palette: rather abstract on the score of Boulez, more frontal and stretched on Fury the concerto for double bbad of Rebecca Saunders, in the second part.

The technique of the dancers – six women and four men – but especially their presence, their commitment to performance, allow them to explore the range of possibilities offered by the body, the most tenuous – the inclination of a neck, the opening of a hand on cheek – more, ripple of the spine, pirouettes, beatings of the legs, falls on the ground.

The small hands of Avignon, an army in maneuvers

A new relationship between dance and music [19659009] If everyone's technique impresses, the very articulation of the groups – at five, then at ten – forces admiration. The shuddering of one shoulder is enough to put the foot of another performer in motion, which in turn will lead to another body in the dance. Like the drops of water in the mbad, the gestures of each dancer take meaning and life in the collective movement, like the notes of a score.

The public, meanwhile, lets its senses wander to a sweet confusion, not knowing soon if he sees the music, with its jolts breaking lines and escapades liberating the busts, or if he hears the dance. On an equal footing, Emanuel Gat's dancers and Modern Ensemble musicians seek to establish a new relationship between dance and music, where the first is not the illustration of the second, and the second is not no simple accompaniment to the first. With composers like Boulez and Saunders, the challenge was not easy.

In Avignon, Olivier Py denounces the tragedy of the present world

This brilliant dialogue takes shape, with accuracy and intensity, in a short sequence entitled "Gaza" blazing like a cry of anger. To recall, if necessary, that the choreographic creation, even in the heights of abstraction, does not ignore anything of the realities of the world, Emanuel Gat projects on the facade of the palace of the Popes bursts of statistics, including ci: "98% of the water in Gaza is not drinkable" . The performers left their white stuffs for ordinary clothes and a more earthly dance, hands and feet hitting the ground. The poem of Rumi ends thus: "And enjoy this bath which you wash / With a secret which is revealed to us sometimes / And sometimes not. The dancers finish the piece on an injunction, the only one that may be worth: "Dance! with all his grace and mystery

—————

Emanuel Gat, choreographer of music and light

Born in 1969 in Israel, Emanuel Gat came to dance only at the age of 23, at the chance of a dance workshop followed during his music studies. Installed in France since 2007, complete and singular artist, he always combines the complexities of movement and light, which he signs for each of his shows.

He also composes the soundtracks of his creations, as here the last part of Story Water with the Frankfurt Modern Ensemble, or in Brilliant Corners (2011), one of his most memorable pieces. After a residency at the Montpellier Danse festival, he will be badociate artist at the Théâtre national de Chaillot from the season 2018-2019.

Marie-Valentine Chaudon (in Avignon)