Le rêve de voler / The dream of flying

English subtitles available.

“I never knew how to fly. That’s normal, no one ever taught me.”

A dialogue, a duo, a lesson between Sophie Billon and Nicolas Barry, Le rêve de voler is a fantasy exploring the excesses of the pursuit of self-surpassing. A series of exercises designed to achieve flight, this piece is doomed to failure—neither performer being a bird, neither will succeed in flying.

Nor even in jumping very high. In a political and public space saturated with economic performance, social tensions, and a fascination with physical strength, Le rêve de voler offers a dreamlike and humorous counterpoint, with a deliberately weak manifesto, a dance that is naively methodical and inherently incapable.

Le rêve de voler is the inaugural piece of a creative cycle launched in 2023, based on a dual approach to artistic creation: friendship and incompletion. Composed of short pieces, they are designed to be performed both in theaters and in public spaces—on the streets, between buildings. They will also be built upon the principles of exchange and generosity: the sharing of knowledge and skills between creators, designers, researchers, and performers.

In a political and public space saturated with economic performance, social tensions, and a fascination with physical strength, this creative cycle aims to generate “idiocies”—simple pieces that approach their subjects with methodical naivety. These subjects will be carefully chosen from those that ordinarily require the most extreme physical or intellectual effort to be reached.