The Palm of your Hand # 2

Recorded at the CND 10 March 2017

The very homogeneous and organic choreographic works of Londoner Vera Tussing, which are being performed for the first time in France, are an invitation to joint engagement and reflection.

With The Palm of Your Hand, a work dating from 2015, the choreographer continues in a vein she began exploring many years earlier centred around the question of movement and tactility. Dancers and audience share an elliptical space, a half-moon, with the people around the performers embodying the limits of the theatrical space, their skin forming a fourth wall. For tactility in the choreographer’s work is not an empty word, but a social act that comes into play, for example in the simple act of shaking hands. The simplicity of the relationship manifests itself in more classical choreographic motifs, the layout of the ellipsis creating a dynamic between the centre and the periphery, intimacy and distance, nearness and distance. This distance between dancer and spectator ends up disappearing, the latter being invited to take part, discovering and shaping the space homogeneously. It’s like a beautiful conversation between friends, skilfully and delicately balanced between listening and speaking, without one position winning out over the other.