Rossignol

Just two years before “Rossignol”, it had been the catwalk, beginning a remarkable ten-year collaboration with the couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier. She is the embodiment of contemporary dance in tune with a celebratory spirit of the age: young, complex.

First produced on march the 28th, 1985.

Régine Chopinot created “Rossignol” over the 28th , 29th and 30th of March 1985, at the end of a three-month residence at CNDC (Centre nationale de danse contemporaine), Angers. A key figure in New French Dance, she was invited the following year to direct the CCN in La Rochelle. Just two years before “Rossignol”, it had been the catwalk, beginning a remarkable ten-year collaboration with the couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier. Régine Chopinot is the embodiment of contemporary dance in tune with a celebratory spirit of the age: young, complex, typifying the tone set by Minister of Culture, Jack Lang.  

And yet, these aspects can mask the depth of writing in the choreography. Playing on outward appearances, “Rossignol” seeks out a basis of movement equally prone to failure, collapse even. As a result, the committed involvement of the ten performers, moving through the air, suspended by running harnesses, was greeted as unprecedented, even decried by some as not being “real dance”.  At a time heady with novelty, “Rossignol”, in daring fashion, confronted the dancers with the loss of their fundamental relationship with the ground.  

Source: Gérard Mayen