Carnets d'un rêveur

In the same way that a painter or sculptor might do, Jean-Claude Gallotta made a series of choreographic sketches in spring 2009 in the gardens and halls of the Bourdelle Art Museum in Paris. Armed only with his dancers, he tried to spark a dialogue between their bodies and the marble, between the living and the inanimate; attempting to answer a question which Antoine Bourdelle may have asked himself as well: “Which – the living being or the inanimate object – has more to learn from the other?”
What goes around comes around – the sculptor who was inspired by dance is now inspiring dancers today. This shows the constant dialogue between two art forms based on movement.
In 16 sketches, Jean-Claude Gallotta, the “dreamer” asleep on the floor of the Museum which he had paced up and down so often, which he had absorbed into his being, imagines his dancers in the hollows of the plaster sculptures, behind the curves of the bronzes, at the corners of the paintings, solo, in duets or in groups, perhaps touching something of Isadora’s soul, right into the sculptor’s workshop. Maybe their spirits still roam there…
Claude-Henri Buffard – 2009

This film was made on the occasion of the exhibition Isadora Duncan 1877–1927 Une sculpture vivante presented on the Bourdelle museum from the 20 November 2009 to the 15 March 2010.