V.O Projet

What does dance mean to you? This is the question that Hervé Robbe posed to around fifty people living in different cities around the world: Brest, Mito and New York.

“Hervé Robbe created three choreographies under the generic title of V.O.: the first for his company Le Marietta Secret in March 1996, the second for the A.T.M. Dance Company in Mito (Japan) in June 1996. A third American volume was added in April 1997. V.O. Brest and V.O. US are performed here in front of an audience. 
What does dance mean to you? This is the question that Hervé Robbe posed to around fifty people living in different cities around the world: Brest, Mito and New York. Their ages and position in society were diverse: New York business man, Breton rapper, pupil from a classical dance school, sailor and Kabuki dancer.  As an ad hoc chronicler, Hervé Robbe elicited intimate statements which lean at times towards a more intellectualised discourse on the body. From these accounts, Cécile Le Pardo extracted the material which makes up the supporting soundtrack for the three parts of V.O.: V.O. Brest, V.O. Mito and V.O. US.
The participation of the interviewees does not end at the “capture” of their voices; they are present on stage via photographic images. The portraits are each installed on a support that the dancers move around and they structure the space for the French part in a quasi-geometrical way. The Japanese are grouped in the same photograph, symbolising their social cohesion. Far from suggesting that the choreographer and stage designer intended to set up a paradigm of each culture; the display is never peremptory: there are outbursts of emotion and a multitude of points of view…The conjunction of language and physical expression puts side by side everyday practice and the exemplary nature of an artistic practice. The switching back and forth between these two modes of expression keeps the audience’s attention on the move. It disorients them. These two dynamic expressions contrast with the fixedness of the portraits.
Moving beyond boundaries to plunge into other reference systems, associating amateur and artist, are different ways to facilitate an encounter, to be caught up in a contemporary story of bodies. Far from any approach which aims to globalise the contents, this work simply invites one to listen sensitively and be carried along by the diversity of the ideas. It leaves the impression that the experiment could continue.”
Source : Extrait d’un texte d’Irène Filiberti – Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre Haute-NormandieCreditsChorégraphie Hervé Robbe création sonore Cécile le Prado lumière Yves Godin conseillère artistique pour les costumes Kazue Naito réalisation vidéo Aldo Lee assisté de Benoit Lanceleur Coproduction le Quartz de Brest, le Marietta Secret, la Fondation Paribas

Filmé au Quartz de Brest en 1997