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On essaye
“On essaye”(2005) is a documentary by Arnold Pasquier. It was produced during rehearsals of Christian Rizzo’s show “Soit le puits était profond, soit ils tombaient très lentement, car ils eurent le temps de regarder tout autour“. It was shot on Monday, April 11th, 2005 at La Chaufferie, Saint Denis.
Remark by Arnold Pasquier in 2019 :
“Invited by my dancer friend Donata D’Urso, interpreter of the show, I went to the Chaufferie de Saint-Denis equipped with my camera with the idea of filming a few shots of the rehearsals.I turned up when the troupe was rehearsing a scene, with corrections and modifications, and I filmed these rehearsals, with the intuition that they would provide the material for a film.”
“Installed in the studio of the Chaufferie, Saint-Denis, Christian Rizzo rehearsed “Soit le puits était profond, soit ils tombaient très lentement, car ils eurent le temps de regarder tout autour“. The stage set, a floor made up of white monoliths, was already in place. The choreographer was lost in his thoughts. Slow panning shots swept the space, while close-ups captured the bodies in motion, the details of the hands or faces. Switching between comments and research moments, a choreographic sequence is played over and over, and we follow its progression through the working day. The notion of falling is at the heart of the work, and its stylised variants, collective or singular, scatter their poetry on the stage, as in the images and motion. Bodies recumbent, borne aloft, shouts and manipulation of objects, structure a minimalist language delicately doomed to disappear”.
Irène Filiberti, in catalogue VIDÉODANSE, Centre Pompidou, 2006.
