Echo

“Echo”, created in 2003, revisits twenty years of creation by drawing from seven works from Catherine Diverrès’ repertoire: “L’Arbitre des elegances”, “L’Ombre du ciel”, “Fragment II”, “Concertino”, “Stance I”, “Corpus” and “Fruits”.

“Echo”, created for the International Dance Festival of Cannes in December 2003, is designed as a “journey through the previous works” [1] of Catherine Diverrès, and comprises extracts from seven works, selected from twenty years of creation: “L’Arbitre des élégances”, “L’Ombre du ciel”, “Fragment II”, “Concertino”, “Stance I”, “Corpus” and “Fruits”. “Only movement, just that” [2] states Irène Filiberti as the first intention of this selection organized in two 50-minute parts. “Arranged based on rhythmic progression”, the extracts privilege “body musicality” [3]: “Short solos are weaved together with duos and trios, which longer group sequences harmonize. “Echo” can be described as a set of open scores. On its staves, the haunted steps of processions, sharp trajectories riffling the space with luminous diagonals, disconcerted take-offs of bodies scattered through singular movements. Solitary stanzas, tempos related to the evocation of the community and its history, every single range of time pulsates on the stage, in a deep black space which is transformed in waves, changes colour and varies depending on emotions and the states experienced. An innermost journey that deals with a community and its language. Dance”. [4]

“Echo”, which comprises both long-standing and new performers, is an opportunity for the dancers – as was the case in “Retour”, “Voltes” and “Stance I” before – to embrace Catherine Diverrès’ “world, technique and energy” and to provoke “an “unconscious” resonance” which “they can make use of later” [5]. “The idea of bursts is included in this approach”, states Irène Filiberti, “for the new dancers as well as for the dancers who were behind the revisited works, and even for the chorographer herself, [she] questions the qualities of movement as well as the qualities of writing”. [6]

Through “Echo”, Catherine Diverrès showcases her previous works, “of a more tragic aspect”, to a renewed public: “It was important that this public, fifteen or twenty years on, – public that does not know my work at all and that is all of a sudden going to see a current-day creation – understands this writing and it is also a way of passing on, to this public, something that will never exist again and which it will never see again”. [7] This new opus illustrates, as such, once again, the durability of the CCNRB Director’s choreographic writing, verifies its relevance and asks the question: “how does it hold out fifteen years on?” [8]

Working on time, memory, transmission is also a way for her to revive her dance, to disconnect the creative process, as was the case with the dialogue concerning Palermo and the Mediterranean Basin, when she created “Cantieri”, “new material which the new performers are not going to draw from within themselves through research and other types of improvisation, but more so by investigating past events” [9].

Finally, revisiting her repertoire also means that the choreographer distances herself from past work, as she explained in 2007 when filmed by Hervé Portanguen: “A bridge has been created with the dancers, which means that, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve completed my transmission work. But, for me, creating “Echo”, performing these solos, has also helped me somehow to let go of previous work. Somehow, when you transmit, you open new pages. Sometimes it is difficult to bear the weight of fifteen or twenty years of choreography with dancers leaving and creations that will never be danced again, that will be swept under the carpet. Breathing new life into them and passing them on at a moment in time is, first of all, very moving but it is also a way for me to distance myself from this past”. [10]

[1] C. Diverrès, creation dossier, 9 December 2002
[2] I. Filiberti, Catherine Diverrès, mémoires passantes, Paris : Centre national de la danse ; L’Oeil d’or, 2010, p. 92.
[3] Ibid, p. 94.
[4] Ibid, p. 93-94.
[5] C. Diverrès, wording taken from extracts of H. Portanguen’s, “Vous dansez ?” , 2007.
[6] I. Filiberti, ibid, p. 93.
[7] C. Diverrès, ibid, 2007.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.

Updating: November 2014