L'Ombre du ciel

Catherine Diverrès partners with the English sculptor of Indian origin Anish Kapoor to express the unleashing of telluric energies and to physically map the political upheavals related to the war in Yugoslavia.

“L’Ombre du ciel” was created on 25 October 1994 at the Théâtre national de Bretagne in Rennes. For this first work produced at the National Choreographic Centre of Rennes and Brittany (CCNRB), which she had been co-running with Bernardo Montet since January the same year, Catherine Diverrès partnered with the English sculptor of Indian origin Anish Kapoor who, via this production, pursued his quest into the dematerialization of objects.

Wishing to set aside the literary material that had filled her creations over the last ten years, C. Diverrès illustrated in this work a return to more abstract and more poetical dance. Her key collaboration with the visual artist, who she acclaimed from the very beginning as the “poet of the work”, would help her abandon this familiar material and guide her towards greater simplicity of forms. The work is, nonetheless, highly-rooted in the war in Yugoslavia and “centre stages the unleashing of telluric energies and physically maps political upheavals” [1].

The two artists share “a transcendental vision of emptiness in its relationship with human interiority” [2] which leads their research to journey into metamorphosis, traverse, transformation, inspired by “the conscience of the impermanence of things”. The travel diaries written by Bashô – a classical Japanese poet of the 16th century – were chosen to accompany the reflections of the artistic team and to incite it to penetrate the spirits of the haikus which the choreographer deemed close to the Western vanities of the 16th century and associated with the metaphors of scenic representation.

To the sound design of the Japanese Eiji Nakazawa – a companion right from the beginning, encountered in Japan with Kazuo Ohno –, the visual artist and the choreographer confront the dancers with a moving floor, and thus unstable, and with the panic that this can engender. Laurence Louppe evokes “a moving floor, offering the body the always-possible fracture of the seisms of the world and where the purpose of the dancing movement is to become the trembling double” [3]

Irène Filiberti acknowledges in this key work “work leading towards the stripping down of self, transparency, lightness, light” [4] and the work drew critical praise for the rejuvenation of the choreographic writing that C. Diverrès illustrates here. Undeniably taking advantage of her recent arrival in Rennes, Catherine Diverrès seems to have taken on a process of unframing, to explore new territory, which turned out to be every bit as fruitful as her trip to Japan: territory where dance and visual creation confront each other. The work is also a transition as regards her accomplices as it was to be her ultimate creation with Bernardo Montet and with Thierry Baë, Rita Quaglia, Lluis Ayet and Olivier Gelpe who would move on from the Company to begin their own work as choreographers.

The work was performed until 1997 and toured France (Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, Paris, Dijon, Lyon, Grenoble, Noisiel, Douai, Angers, Châlons-en-Champagne, Limoges) and abroad (Antwerp, Munich, Lisbon).

Claire Delcroix

[1] P. Allio, “Désordres”, in I. Filiberti, Catherine Diverrès, mémoires passantes, 2010, p. 83.
[2] C. Diverrès, Ferme du Buisson press kit, 10 December 1994.
[3] L. Louppe, “Poétique de la danse contemporaine”, p. 194.
[4] Irène Filiberti, Théâtre de la Ville, 13-17 June 1995.

Updating: March 2016