Noé Soulier
Choreographer
April-October 2023
© Willfried Thiery - Cndc
- Performing Arts
- New York
Throughout my career, I have searched for ways of defining movement … They allow me to access a unique experience of self by using gesture to focus on different dimensions of the body: its geometry, tangibility, sensitivity, emotionality, and so forth.
As part of Albertine Dance Season 2023
Throughout my career, I have searched for ways of defining movement within the various choreographic vernaculars of the 19th and 20th centuries. I attempt to identify the principles that govern these dances, while using my analysis to develop a bodily vocabulary that both perpetuates and transforms them. These approaches to understanding movement are, in my view, crucial. They allow me to access a unique experience of self by using gesture to focus on different dimensions of the body: its geometry, tangibility, sensitivity, emotionality, and so forth. I am also interested in the practical and semantic aspects involved in bodily gesture. Beyond conventional, pre-defined motion, how can a gesture articulate a form of meaning and open expressivity? What performative dimensions might a practiced gesture take on when detached from its primary function? How can tools and items serve as traces or triggers of gestures? I explore each of these questions in a variety of settings, including on stage, in museum space, and through theoretical reflection.
In 2010, after completing his studies in dance at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMD), Canada’s National Ballet School, and the PARTS School for Contemporary Dance, and philosophy at La Sorbonne, Noé Soulier won the “Danse élargie” competition. In 2016, he published Actions, mouvements et gestes (Éditions du CND). In 2020, he took over as head of the CNDC – Angers.
His creations have been presented at the Paris Autumn Festival, Centre Pompidou, Théâtre National de Chaillot, Performa, Kaaitheater Brussels, Tanz im August/HAU Berlin, Tanzquartier Vienna, Teatro Municipal do Porto and the Roma Europa Festival.
He has also created performances for the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Netherlands Dans Theater, Los Angeles Dance Project (LADP) dance company, Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, Ballet de Lorraine and Ballet du Rhin.
In New York City, I created In the Fall with the dancers of the Trisha Brown Dance Company in October 2023. The idea of this collaborative performance was to bring my own methods up against the unique approach to movement shared by the group.
Trisha Brown’s artistic legacy lies not only in the pieces that she left us, but also in the intimacy offered by the bodies of the performers who have helped create this decades-long repertoire of work. Beyond mere created works, the history of dance is—arguably, above all else—written in the ways in which we rehearse, warm up, and move. It is the unique bodily relationships invented together by dancers and choreographers. In many respects, Trisha and I use different choreographic languages. Whereas she exposed with extraordinary clarity and fluidity the fundamental forces acting on the body, I explore inorganic transitions and gaps between intention and gesture; and between effort and tension. Despite these apparent contrasts, my approach to movement bears the marks of Trisha’s methods. Even in the aspects that set it apart, my dance forms a dialog with the remarkable choreographic renaissance that she helped bring about.
This project took me to New York, where in the 1960s and 1970s, incredible choreographic inventiveness gave rise to a multiplicity of ways of approaching the body, movement and performance. It was more specifically with Trisha Brown’s company, which carries this heritage in the expertise of its performers, that the encounter took place. Rehearsing in New York provided a unique opportunity to immerse oneself in the context that saw the birth of these profound changes in the approach to choreography, and to meet many of the company’s collaborators.
In partnership with
La Filature – Scène nationale de Mulhouse
Each season, the Scène nationale offers theater, dance, music, circus and young audience shows. The programming, open to contemporary creation, mixes internationally renowned artists and emerging companies, contemporary texts and new looks at the repertoire.
TBDC
TBDC actively promotes the performance of Trisha’s choreography by companies around the globe. The Professional Licensing program makes selected works from Trisha Brown’s 40 years of repertory available to professional companies worldwide.
