Arbitre des élégances (L')

“L’Arbitre des élégances ou Du baroque dans le désert”, a creation for five dancers and an actor, which premiered at the Sigma Festival in Bordeaux on 8 November 1986, addresses the subject of nostalgia, old age and death.

CHOREOGRAPHY CATHERINE DIVERRÈS

“L’Arbitre des élégances ou Du baroque dans le désert”, commissioned by the Carré Saint-Vincent, the National Theatre in Orléans, premiered at the Sigma Festival in Bordeaux on 8 November 1986. The CNDC, National Centre for Contemporary Dance in Angers, amongst others, provided its premises, which were empty during the summer, for rehearsals. The work was performed at the Théâtre de la Bastille (December 1986), in Orléans (Carré Saint Vincent, 1987), in Le Havre, in Geneva and then at the Tanz Festival in Vienna in March 1988. It became popular in exactly the same way as “Instance”, with several years passing by between when it was created and when it attracted interest. The work was reproduced in August 1991 during the Avignon Festival before being performed in the Théâtre de la Ville (Paris) and then in the Quartz in Brest.

A creation for five dancers and an actor, “L’Arbitre des élégances” addresses the subject of nostalgia, old age and death through linked sequences, bathed in a dramatic atmosphere. This sentence from Hamlet is quoted as a preamble: “Is’t possible, a young maid’s wits should be as mortal as an old man’s life?”

Drawing on powerful images and the texts “Avis de décès” (Obituary) by Heiner Müller and “Tumeur cervykal” (Tumor Brainiowicz) by Stanislaw Witkiewicz, the production diffuses a theatricality that lies between Baroque and abstraction: “For “L’Arbitre des élégances”, I use Heiner Müller, Witkiewicz. We could do without, but why move if a sentence says it better. On the other hand, there are times when the clumsiness of the gesture is irreplaceable. It is interesting to interweave the two. The aim is to make the spectator feel fragile and awake in a society that is over-informed. In the Baroque world of “L’Arbitre des élégances”, I believe the texts bring emphasis, emphasis of abstraction, of sensuality, something ancient. (…) The powerful images entice the spectator, like a painting, yet this does not mean that the work is easy to comprehend. We have to ensure the gaze does not get carried away by images that are too powerful. Thought is generated through emptiness. » [1]

As regards the work’s enigmatic sub-title – “Du baroque dans le désert” (Baroque in the desert) – Catherine Diverrès explains that, through this antithesis, she sought to conjure up the tension between excess and emptiness: “The inspiration of the Baroque movement, in its excesses, in its unrelenting artistic will, is based, historically, on a period where values are upset, disrupted, which makes it easy to create a parallel with the present (…). The desert is at the extreme, like emptiness of the mind, like death of the intention, Sais faced with the unveiled image, collapses, the fire of the pursuit is consumed. With love as the learning process. “Du baroque dans le désert” is a paradox in itself. But TENSION is born out of extremes, a sort of distant gaze, a measure of impermanence and imminence”. [2]

Her creation notes, included in the press kit, illustrate her sources of inspiration, all mixed together:

“Trip to Holland,
The light of Vermeer, visit to Versailles.
The portrait, relationship of three plus one:
time.
Transmission of glances,
Sensitive, impressive, private memory.
Du baroque dans le désert.
Death of the intention, everything is possible.
1600 Shakespeare wrote Hamlet
“Is’t possible, a young maid’s wits should be as mortal as an old man’s life”
1690
In Japan, Bashô wrote his travel diaries.
“Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones”
1927 Proust wrote “Le Temps retrouvée” (Time Regained).
Relationship with aging
Legends of Frans Hals
Lightness of the gesture, incisive punctuation,
Dance, hailing from thought, fluid.
Determination of the decomposition”. (Théâtre de la Ville press kit, 18-19 October 1991)

The 1991 reprise was “more danced” according to Marcelle Michel, critic from the French newspaper Libération. For the occasion, Josef Nadj and Alain Rigout returned temporarily to the company, which they had, by then, left. Fragments of the work would subsequently reappear on stage: duos, as such, were reproduced as ‘one-shots’ during the Duos Festival in the Théâtre national de Bretagne (TNB – National Theatre of Brittany) in 1994, whilst excerpts were successively integrated into the anthological works “Retour” (1995) and “Voltes” (2001).

Claire Delcroix

[1] C. Diverrès in Marcelle Michel, “Elégances Diverrès”, Libération, 27 July 1991
[2] Théâtre de la Ville press kit, 18-19 October 1991

PROGRAMME EXTRACTS

“On the stage, a tiled mark, vestige of the past and a few streaks of snow, hinting travel. A blue drop hangs from the rigging. Bernardo Montet takes possession of the diagonal. His laconic presence, emphasized by the rapidity of the movement, erases all traces. It seems as if he never existed before the step that would take him from the edge of the stage. In the cross-section, the light that strikes with full force burns other silhouettes. Beneath the sobriety of the colours, beneath the strangeness of the emotions, it is best not to forget the black from which they come, the shade that embraced them for a long time. Each of them carries within themselves their own exile, the body traversed by fundamental dispersion. Alain Rigout hides behind confessions extracted bit by bit from the very heart of Heiner Müller and Witkiewicz’s texts. (…) Defender of irony, Josef Nadj cultivates a certain sensuality of fear and, with a husky timbre, duplicates the clamour of the words formed by the fickle voice of the actor, multiplying his masks. A frenzy of dislocation runs through Thierry Baë’s leaps and falls. Whilst, with an almost artless movement, Marion Mortureux traces out a white, upbeat, melodic line, which extends into the void, Catherine Diverrès, face veiled, moves back and forth between commas and apostrophes”.

Irène Filiberti, Théâtre de la Ville programme, October 1991

“Stage littered with small beads (polystyrene?) like salt or icy snow. A dark story without any possible narrative. Catherine Diverrès produces an hour and a quarter of choreography without any decipherable biography of a dramatic journey. More accurately, it is a state that she organizes through successive tableaux which all culminate by merging into the surprising final image: a painting by Vermeer [Ed.: Actually, it is Frans Hals’ Regentesses], five religious figures around red apples. Here, time slows down, concentrated in this small space around a table, the bodies remain motionless and the eyes stare at us. What took place before disappears into the pictorial representation, simulating this famous emptiness to which Diverrès aspires, by subtitling her work “Du baroque dans le désert”.

The Baroque would, as such, take place before, in the confrontation and shock of the bodies which come together, collide and fall violently to the ground. (…) Without ever touching on the chords of virtuosity or the spectacular, the dance deals directly with the limits of representing violence, harm, blows, falls. The perfectly-controlled body excesses simulate a rupture, a revolt, a scream that hit us in our very flesh. »

C. G., “Avignon : Diverrès corps à corps”, La Marseillaise, 29 July 1991

CREDITS

Premiered at the Sigma Festival in Bordeaux on 8 November 1986, reproduced in August 1991 at the Aubanel high school gymnasium for the Avignon Festival.

choreography Catherine Diverrès
dancers Thierry Baë, Catherine Diverrès, Bernardo Montet, Marion Mortureux, Josef Nadj
actor Alain Rigout
music Bach, Bartok, Schubert

stage design Jean Yves Bouchicot, Catherine Diverrès
costumes Manon Martin, Goury, Chantal Rader

duration 1h20

texts Avis de décès (Obituary), Hamletmachine, Heiner Müller, trans. Jean Jourdheuil, Heinz Scharzinger, published by Editions de Minuit. “Tumeur cervykal” (Tumor Brainiowicz) in Théâtre complet, V, Witkiewicz, trans. Alain Van Crugten, published by L’âge d’homme.

latest update: November 2014