ARCHIVES 2011 / enfant

For his new creation, the choreographer Boris Charmatz fills the Cour d'honneur du Palais des papes with a horde of 26 children aged from 6 to 12. Inspired by the nocturnal vision, in the Cour d'honneur, of a crane building up the stage and tiers, Boris Charmatz's piece is in the very line of régi, one of his previous shows where choreographing machines were seizing the dancers' inert bodies. Yet the balance of power is more disturbing and intricate in enfant, and its univocity demands nothing but being revived. Nine dancers catch the children's delicate bodies, raise them up in the air and make them fly, hug them and make them glide, with such determination that the children are left with no choice but speaking their words and ask: what keeps on dancing in childhood in spite of everything? and what does childhood inspire through dancing? The place may be a Cour d'honneur, but it is also a playground - a matter of gravity, in every sense of the word. In the foreword of his work L'Inhumain, the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard wrote: "Devoid of speech, incapable of correct posture, hesitant about the objects of his interest, unable to decide what is good for him, insensitive to common reason, the child is eminently human because his distress announces and promises every possibility. His original view on humanity, which condemns him to be a hostage of the adults, shows the latter how much they lack humanity, and also encourages them to become more human." Fond of reversals, Boris Charmatz expects the children to revive the spectator's childhood through feelings that some of them are longing to blot out forever. Each gesture could be subversive, a powerful magnet drawing to the unknown; a genuine although faltering relearning of freedom, which could lead to an ephemeral republic of children. JLP