Cribles

Cribles : A choreographic legend for 1000 dancers – piece created by Emmanuelle Huynh in 2009

Children

Of this world, or the other Singing musical rounds With absurd and lyrical words Which no doubt are what is left Of the oldest poetic monuments Of humanity

Apollinaire

“I placed my metaphorical camera obscura in front of this stanza of Apollinaire’s Alcools — and I heard cries, laughter, jingles, glimpsed little games, circles, rounds, people in lines, bridges, drawings (designs?) – archaic, simple, sometimes old-fashioned. I also saw some implausible versatilities, abusive outbursts, old-style tramplings, inopportune journeys.

In front of them, behind and underneath them, the shadows of these dances merge with them. As if a landslide or a weighty inversion had somehow distorted the perspective on these movements and their representations.

Facing us are legends, myths, stories, rites, consecrations, chronicles, conjectures, sagas and intrigues – all rising up from under the feet of the dancers, climbing up to our linked arms.

I cannot help thinking that I am dealing with archaeologists who have lost their memories, but not their movement.

These archaeologists are creating joyful archives, never stabilised, such that each will play a singular and continual role in building the community to which he or she belongs.”

In this work, I am working with a simple form, the round – to retrace steps found at parties, consecrations, wedding dances, warrior dances, processions, stamping of feet, unisons, time-lags, interlockings, leg action from musical comedy. The round collapses, flattens out, staggers itself, turns itself into a bas relief, a frieze, a whirlpool, a carousel, a tourniquet, a conga line, hugs the wall. In this multiple form where community is first, singularity keeps coming up, “one” always appearing in its striking dialogical and dynamic relationship to the others, sometimes initiating, sometimes being led. A kind of giant, mobile camera obscura creates more shadowed moments, revealing what I feel may be the “dark side” of the round, the inside of the machinery, the underside of the dancing.The machine is both a lighting source and a screen on which shadows will be projected, multiplying the silhouettes of the dancers present onstage. Shadows and images will have their own choreography.

Persephassa, a piece for six percussionists by Iannis Xenakis – is already a rather special partner to this dance because of its power and its polyrhythm. I feel that its construction in masses and blocks is in fact actualised both visually and choreographically. Its spatial sound architecture with its disseminations and transformations of the “round” form creates multiple call-and-answer phrases which are mutally supportive and honeycomb together. Ideally for me what happens is that you begin wondering if you’re looking at music — or listening to dance.This project includes some new data in terms of the transformation of my work: it is the first time I am choreographing for ten dancers, and the way I am thinking of the alliance with the music is also another step, as well as how I will be utilising image.