Paroles du feu

[Words of fire] 

“Exhale, inhale the damp breath of fiery energy. In the deliberately chosen space of the Chapelle Fromentin, work to let the good space in oneself appear. Because fire wants to be transformed into danced words. Dance, supported by the ambivalent material of the element of fire, while being fired correctly in a momentum as impassioned as it is detached. The gravity of the object is unlimited and the risks of going up in flames multiple.” (Régine Chopinot, quoted in the programme of the public rehearsal on 4 December, 1996) “Paroles du feu” represents the continuation of the research undertaken in “Végétal” (“Plant”) (1995) and also works with the elements. Here fire is in the spotlight, with all the imaginary worlds it generates, its capacity for transformation and its relationship with the body. It is about a work about the inner fire, about listening to the body. The piece was created especially for the Chapelle Fromentin (workplace of the BARC in La Rochelle) and would be presented first at the Montpellier Danse Festival and then at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.  The music, composed by the Vietnamese Tôn-Thât Tiêt – who would work again with Chopinot in 1999 on “La Danse du temps (Dance of time)” – is played live by a string trio, accompanied by three other musicians and is broadcast in 4.0 surround sound.  The audience sits in a square around the dancers, who play with volumes of the Chapelle Fromentin and the points of the compass. “Paroles du feu” begins with a solo by Chopinot, followed by the circling of the dancers. Set design is by the visual artist Florence Gourier, a trained painter, who designed a minimalist set consisting of a floor of ashes.

The show was not received particularly well: as for “Végétal”, the audience was unsettled by this piece, whereas the following piece “Les Quatre Saisons” (The Four seasons) (1998) was much more successful, due undoubtedly to its somewhat simpler approach, accompanied by the music of Vivaldi.

Programme extract

““Paroles du feu” is a piece that makes no concessions to simple aesthetics. But it is stripped of any austerity. Carnal, marvellous in its sensory while listening to interior fires, it is to be enjoyed with the body, from the spatial-temporal place which it creates in us, which it illuminates even for the veiled darkness of secret combustions.”

Laurence Louppe, Théâtre de la Ville de Paris journal, March 1998

Updating: February 2013