Délices

A new genre of musical, created in July 1983 at the Festival de Châteauvallon Danse, “Délices” stages three female love stories, in a script adapted from the short story collection “Délices, chroniques incertaines” by Hervé Gauville (CDC, 1983).

Seven tableaux inspired by some of literature’s best-known love stories (“Héloïse and Abélard”, “Orpheus and Eurydice”, “Letters of a Portuguese Nun”), follow one another, in the form of video projections produced by Charles Picq: “Un soupçon de jalousie” (A hint of jealousy), “Héloise et Abélard”, “Correspondance”, “Orfeo et Euridice” (Orpheus and Eurydice), “Palatino”, “Considère, mon amour, jusqu’à quel excès tu as manqué de prévoyance” (Consider, my love, just how much you have lacked foresight), “Femme seule en Italie avec un noyé” (Lone woman in Italy with a drowned man). Projected intermittently on a screen at the back of the stage, the films plunge the dancers into a new world: “visions of oversized leaves rustling in the wind, dunes cresting like waves in the night, a wet and cold bathroom, and finally, a railway which sinks into the greenery and uncoils itself (…)” [1].

In addition to the innovative idea of using a script and a filmed backdrop, something unheard of at the time, the uniqueness of “Délices” also lies in the presence of actors who mixed with the dancers – in particular the voluptuous Brazilian actress Vera Lucia Motta, whose performance “was seen as a scandal for the dance world” [2].

“Délices” was also Régine Chopinot’s first collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier, fashion’s enfant terrible at this beginning of this decade, coming as he did from the punk scene. Gaultier, captivated by “Swim one”, confided to Libération that: “I like her way of using the body without aesthetic bias, her way of sometimes confronting gestures considered as ugly, of reversing the codes and the values of movement […] her dance and my costumes: the same vision, the same distortion of meaning.” [3] Here Jean Paul Gaultier designed “deconstructed costumes whose pieces seem to burst out in every direction. The diversity of the body types is assured, in particular by the performance (…) of the voluptuous Brazilian Vera Motta Buono, poured into a salmon pink bullet bra corset.” [4] The collaboration with the designer on many more iconic pieces- “Rossignol” (Nightingale), “Le Défilé” (The Fashion show), “KOK” and later “Anna”, “St George” and “Façade”, a collaboration which continued until the 2010s with “Very wetr” – helped turn Régine Chopinot into a media phenomenon of 1980s whose works went far beyond the sphere of live performance.

“Délices” used many innovative methods to help make it an ambitious, unmatched work. For Régine Chopinot, this piece was also a milestone which marked a new step on her creative path: “It’s the first time I felt that I had nothing to prove to myself, and that I tried to do something different

[1] A. Suquet, « Chopinot », Le Mans : Cénomane, 2010, p. 27.
[2] A. Suquet, op. cit., p. 31.
[3] R. Chopinot, interview with Brigitte Paulo-Neto, « La danseuse et le créateur », Libération, June 1984 ; quoted by A. Suquet, p. 34.
[4] A. Suquet, op. cit., p. 31.
[5] Quoted by Patrick Bossatti, « “Délices” au Théâtre de la Ville », Les Saisons de la danse, No. 160, January 1984.

Press quotes

“Until now, Régine Chopinot has been recognised as the creator of short, effective pieces, written in a very personal and purely choreographic language (“Appel d’air” (In-draught), which was awarded a medal at Bagnolet in 1980, “Simone”, “Swim one”, “Grand Ecart” (“The splits”), etc.). This time, her work extends beyond the field of choreography. “Délices” is designed like a sort of mutated musical, firstly because the cinema plays a new role in this work – it alone constitutes the set. The videos projected on a giant screen are no longer used solely to support the images of the dance. They put the bodies into perspective. What’s more, by creating their own images, they reveal a truly cinematic narrative, which, although they do not tell a story, do not upset the traditional methods of perceptions in modern dance any less.  Another new method: the recourse to an actual script. The plot of “Délices” is based on seven short stories: four chronicles from the life of a woman (Un soupçon de jalousie, Correspondance, Palatino, Femme seule en Italie avec un noyé) accompanied by three great myths or love stories (The Ballad of Héloïse and Abélard, Orpheus and Eurydice and “Considère, mon amour, jusqu’à quel excès tu as manqué de prévoyance”, variations on the “Letters of a Portuguese Nun”). Lastly, the presence of actors, especially that of Vera Lucia Motta Buona, a large lady from a troop of Brazilian transvestites, together with Régine Chopinot’s usual dancers (Michele Prélonge, Philippe Découflé and Monet Robier), all wearing Jean Paul Gaultier’s grotesque costumes, contributed to distorting the order of things. All in all, “Délices” is ambiguous and not particularly easy to watch.”

Ch. A., « De délices en mutants », Libération, 17 January 1984

“Once upon a time (..) “Délices”, a kind of choreographed photo novel, which the audience’s gaze synthesises. An ambitious work which, this summer, sometimes divided the audience, unable to see sufficiently, in depth, its second, if not hidden, meaning. Film images on a large screen and a woman at the window. Run, dance, wait. It’s not Chopinot. She will arrive a little later. Each woman has her own love story and Hervé Gauville wrote about them all in turn, in prose or in verse, reinventing the myths of Héloïse and Abélard, Orpheus and Eurydice, the Portuguese nun, and other myths of the unlucky in love. Some are beautiful and some a little dark. (…)  From the literary text to the film, from the film to the dance, the story progresses well.  The choreography enriches the story with its nuances, its ruptures, its curves and its sometimes dizzying peaks. Because ultimately, it is the choreography which brings “Délices” together and which translates this hidden, intimate meaning, which verges on despair, war, death as well as love, all the while whispering (…).”

Lise Brunel, « Les délices amoureux de Régine Chopinot », Le Matin, 17 January 1984

Updating: February 2013