ARCHIVES 2014 / Matter

Matter, as in the matrix, the mother; but also “the matter,” the issue, the affair, the topic. Women have likely been all those things, and more... and it is precisely on representations of the female body that Julie Nioche works. For Matter, she invited several women to share the stage with her. Every one of them is sovereign, at once alone in her kingdom and supporting her companions. Each wears a dress made of paper, white, like a precious second skin that they have to protect, like a page on which they can write their own story before ripping it off. They all come from different countries, are all dance activists. Julie Nioche went looking for them, ventured into their territory, to hear the sounds of their environment, to feel the energy that prompts them to dance. All agreed to tell the story written on their white dress, to expose themselves. They also talked about the water that slowly floods the stage and strips them bare, uniting them in a common fragility in spite of their unique characteristics. Matter is a manifesto that is never sententious, whose plastic beauty opens infinite horizons of projection and interpretation on the theme of women, but also of our relationships.

Suspended among weighing masses (Nos Solitudes/Our Solitudes), harassed by a propeller that they have to follow or dodge (Voleuse/Thief), stripped bare by the water that floods the stage (Matter), the performers of Julie Nioche's plays are the subjects of a form of dancing that always doubles as an ordeal. The devices she creates, often with scenographer Virginie Mira, allow the expression, in a precarious state, of a newfound freedom. For the beings of Julie Nioche's plays are trapped in parallel and overwhelming solitudes, as in Sisyphus, in which 50, 100, 150, 200 people jump up and down, standing next to one another and facing the same direction. Parallel to her creations, she develops with A.I.M.E., Association d'Individus en Mouvements Engagés (Association of Moving and Committed Individuals), various projects of practice for people of different origins, which she sees as part of a “process of empowerment.” How to give people back their agency, to increase their autonomy? Those are crucial social and political questions to which Julie Nioche answers through her practice of both osteopathy and dance.

Renan Benyamina, April 2014