The chance

What must a performer do in order to dance, really dance? He plunges into his imagination, trying to abandon his training, his knowledge, his savoir-faire. He ventures into a rhythmical, physical narrative. A narrative of the senses.

What must a performer do in order to dance, really dance? He plunges into his imagination, trying to abandon his training, his knowledge, his savoir-faire. He ventures into a rhythmical, physical narrative. A narrative of the senses.
What does he encounter in this place? His memories? His future? Those who watch him?
To approach these states of dance we have practiced hypnotism and telepathy. We have created frameworks for exposure and appearance with simple characteristics; we have invented a deep, indiscernible hinterland.  The dances which are shown one after the other are but one endlessly reinvented dance.
It is a kind of collective ritual that requires everyone’s attention and accompaniment, that allows the dance to embody and to reveal that which goes beyond our expectations.
LOÏC TOUZÉ

“Throughout the past ten years choreographers and dancers have incesssantly put their own practice into crisis a practice based on technique, rigour and performance: «What must a performer do in order to dance, to really dance?»  This question has structured the whole contemporary dance landscape from Jérôme Bel to Boris Charmatz, from Alain Buffard to Olivier Dubois, Emmanuelle Huynh or Loïc Touzé. After ten years of work in Rennes, Loïc Touzé has created a performance piece which questions the act of dancing and the very fabric of movement. This question takes the form of a ritual for six dancers who display themselves without artifice. The piece, judiciously titled « the chance » gives the performers the unique possibility to ask themselves exactly what it is they are doing when they are in “a state of dance». The process is incontestably fascinating and gives much more in return than something simply spectacular. In deciding not to show dance in order to give more time to think about it, artists risk locking themselves into a world without windows. With this piece, one could say that Loïc Touzé has attained a new limit, which offers him the chance to write a whole new chapter.”
BRUNO TACKELS, Mettre en scène l’indiscipline, mouvement.net, december 2009