Black Out - Intention note
The priorities in this piece are essentially graphic, although a dramaturgical framework has been superimposed discretely, and dictates the progression of the piece, as much on the visual as on the gestural level. At the start of the piece, we find ourselves in a world all of white, overexposed, rather like the roof of a building where three people have come to sunbathe, with their swimming costumes and towels. To get a tan, to darken. An irradiated space, erasing the thickness of their bodies, reducing them to the two dimensional form of an image. A sketch in movement, a moving composition of flattened silhouettes, a white surface, the bright colours of the swimming costumes and the towels. This bird’s eye view puts us in the almost clinical situation of observers. We are scrutinising a microcosm close to our own, consisting of time-killing activities, with their codes both familiar and indecipherable. The falling ‘black matter’ gradually obscure the space, obliterating both the white surface and the colours. But they also restore substance to the bodies. In a sort of “regressive evolution”, the three protagonists attempt to domesticate this invasion. But it will prove to be quite resistant to any attempt at mastering it. Progressively, they will become as one with the matter, dissolve into it, and yet, paradoxically, rediscover power and life. Images of regression, of a return to origins, or even an elegy to the shadow from which our contemporary overexposure distances us, and above all the pictorial work, Black Out is an unusual piece in my career as a choreographer. It is far removed from the kind of theatricality you can find in my recent pieces, and bears witness to a very old attachment to drawing, to the use of charcoal, graphite, pastels… Nuances of grey and black, a breeding ground for memories and snippets of bodies.
Philippe Saire, September 2011
