99 duos

Why 99 duets?
First of all, there was a great desire – or necessity? – to move away from the fine gatherings of people who generally attend the shows choreographed by Jean-Claude Gallotta. To leave aside Daphnis, Ulysses, Don Juan and even Don Quixote and Marco Polo for a moment. Or at least forget them as the guardian figures of choreography in order, perhaps, to bring them back in another guise, as souvenirs or the reminiscences of former ballets.
A desire, therefore, like a cure, a return to sparkling sources, to strip off the very argument of any accompanying image. Already, Ulysses continued his journey without Ulysses’ face; already Presque Don Quichotte wound its way across the plateau without the figures of Alonzo and Sancho; already Les Larmes de Marco Polo set out on their journey across the cheek of time without the incarnation of the Genoese explorer. One step more, a narrative parchment less and there we have a new choreography with no pseudonyms, which acknowledges its generic name and which, from the time the title appears, reveals its structure with no indication of the flesh and clothing covering it.
To return to its roots, of course, it needed to return to its initial form, the choreographic composition through which Jean-Claude Gallotta became a choreographer, (“ Pas de Deux ” in 1980 ), on which he has worked for the last twenty years and which he still thinks he has not exhausted all its combinations. According to him, there are still a lot of duets to do. Something like a thousand. That’s right, an infinite number. Here, then, are a thousand duets and even a thousand and one duets, like the Nights; and even a thousand and three like the Women; and even one hundred and seven like the Years; and even thirty six like the candles. Finally there will be ninety nine duets, to go right to the end of double numbers.
This is not an exercise in style nor a choreographic exploit. It is a matter of expressing with rhythm ( dancing, music and words ) the incalculable variations of Two, a figure with all the opportunities for ambivalence and doubling, the first and most radical of divisions and the germ of creative change. To achieve this, Jean-Claude Gallotta has summoned his interpreters, an actor, musicians and people. These people – a cross-section of humanity, of every category of age, all shapes and sizes and all shades of difference – form the first part, accompanying and accompanied by the “ merry stammering ” of an actor and music from the Strigalle. The Company of dancers, all together in the second half, tell all they know about the ways of accommodating two. The same eight performers, in successive couples, will form four duets to end up on the crest of this effervescent story, this maze without end.
Claude-Henri Buffard

Intention
Among the opponents: solitude.
With this show, we felt we were worthy of the battle, ready for the fight. Just to be sure, we fictively multiplied ourselves, on par with the several billion of our planet. What we don’t yet know about solitude are its contents, how serious it is, how is it transmitted.
So, with 99 duos we intend to test and verify the powers of two. Under these conditions, does solitude dissolve? If so, at what rate? Of course we’ll study its resistance against two bodies who love each other. At the very least. It’s melting rate, its flint effects. We’ll add, just to see, a third solitude. We’ll measure the amplitude of shock. We’ll also see if four solitudes won’t unite, two by two, you never know, if five or six won’t do this, if twenty or a hundred would not do that. But “99duos” isn’t just a mathematical performance. Jean-Claude Gallotta, all the while drawing new bisecting lines between bodies, will continue to count on the resourcefulness of the living, the audacity of singularity.
In this way, to survive at least for a moment against the venom of solitude, the choreographer will attempt to charm the cobra in it and dissect it, daze it, along with us, to the sound of one of his favorite figures: the duo.
The animal will hopefully be shorn of a few of its scales.
Claude-Henri Buffard