Jérôme Bel

Isadora Duncan

Archive 2021
CND Centre national de la danse
novembernov 18 – 20
Musée de l’Orangerie
decemberdec 6
1/3

Concept, Jérôme Bel
Choreography, Isadora Duncan
With Elisabeth Schwartz and, alternately, Sheila Atala, Chiara Gallerani, and Jérôme Bel
Artistic advisor, Rebecca Lasselin
Produced by R.B. Jérôme Bel
This show is a coproduction by the Festival d’Automne à Paris. It is presented in association with Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie.
A production by R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris)
A coproduction by Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris) ; R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris) ; Tanz im August – HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) ; BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen) ; La Commune centre dramatique national d’Aubervilliers ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
In association with Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie (Paris) ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
With support from CND Centre national de la danse (Pantin) as part of its residency programme, MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis (Bobigny), Ménagerie de Verre (Paris) as part of Studiolab, for the availability of rehearsal spaces.
First performed on the16th August 2019 at Deutsches Theater (Berlin) as a part of Tanz im August.

In this danced portrait of Isadora Duncan, performed at Festival d'Automne in 2019, Jérôme Bel pursues his explorations into the political dimension of dance. By confronting archives from the past with live performance in the present, Isadora Duncan enables us to contemplate a thought in action.

In this piece created for Elisabeth Schwartz, Jérôme Bel continues the series of portraits of dancers he initiated in 2004, focusing this time around on the figure of Isadora Duncan, and on whose work he is a specialist. Jérôme Bel builds up the portrait, for the very first time, of a choreographer now deceased, using her autobiographical account, Ma vie, as the basis for his research. Beneath this romanesque character who, by virtue of her immense freedom of expression, always put the emphasis on the spontaneous and the natural, Jérôme Bel discovers a visionary choreographer who paved the way for modern dance, and hence contemporary dance. Combining discursive and sensory registers, spoken sections and danced solos, the show brings back to life the memory of free dance by associating choreographic knowledge with the experience of live performance.
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N.B. For ecological reasons, no air travel is made for the touring of this piece. A version is being created in New York, via Skype, with the dancer Catherine Gallant.
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Estimated running time : 1h

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