Bonhomme de vent

Sima Khatami folllowed the work process of Boris Charmatz and Jeanne Balibar’s “La danseuse malade”. This process is based on the books of Tatsumi Hijikata, who cofounded the butô with Kazuo Ohno.

On September 24th 2008, at the Angers CNDC (National Choreographic Development Centre), the choreographer and dancer Boris Charmatz created La Danseuse malade, in partnership with the actress Jeanne Balibar. From June 2007 up to the eve of the dress rehearsal, Sima Khatami followed the work process resulting in this piece based on the writings of Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-1986), the founder, with Kazuo Ohno, of Butoh or the “obscure body” dance.

More than the actual piece, of which the film only shows, in no particular order, a few scenes in the course of elaboration, more than the actual process – though he introduces us into its intimacy, with warm-ups, discussions, attempts and rehearsals – it is Hijikata’s universe and his thinking that Bonhomme de vent discovers. Yet, by having his calligraphy texts read aloud by Ayumi Morita or carried by the voices of Charmatz and Balibar, by inserting, between the work images, large extracts from Nombril et la Bombe Atomique (Navel and A-Bomb) (1960), a short film by Eikoh Hosoe produced with Hijikata’s participation, Sima Khatami’s film remains faithful to Boris Charmatz’s intention for this project: “My idea is not to make Butoh from these hallucinatory texts as they already bear Butoh inside them […] But that the strength of his writings, which must be as though offered up to reading, leave us free in the very gesture of carrying them”.

The sources of this duet, pairing together Boris Charmatz and Jeanne  Balibar, are translations of texts by Tatsumi Hijikata, founder of  Butoh, a contemporary Japanese dance form developed in the 1960s. “La  danseuse malade” is not an adaptation of a text by Hijikata, nor is it a  dramatization of his texts, but rather a parallel creation which echoes  the power of the Japanese writer, just as “Con forts fleuve” (1999)  worked with John Giorno’s texts. The presence of a truck on the stage  alludes to the machines in “Régi” (2005). Now, however, the  machine-vehicle constrains and confines the body. In the selected  extract, the multiplication of projected images on different scales is  evocative of one of the foundational elements of Butoh: its relation to  the cosmos. Like Russian dolls, the macrocosm always mirrors the  microcosm. The living being is located in-between: both as a miniature  of the larger and a big version of the smaller universe. By using video  images projected onto the surface of the vehicle, the play of images and  scales becomes complex: the video image offers a synchronized and  enlarged vision of the interior space of the vehicle which is itself in  motion, rotating round its axis on the stage. Having observed the stage  occupied with visual material, attention shifts to the confined space of  the driver’s cabin, an intimate place and the site of a micro-event.

Source : Boris Charmatz

More information : borischarmatz.org