ARCHIVES 2016 / Espæce

“To live is to move from one space to another, while trying real hard not to stub one's toes.” A sentence that sums up both the mood and the project of Georges Perec's Species of Spaces, a book that's part essay, part poem, and part autobiography. How does Aurélien Bory, artist of tangents and inclined planes, of weightlessness and verticality, make his this work, whose starting point is but a sheet of paper? Species of Spaces has been the director's companion for a while now. He's always been fascinated by Perec's “typewriters,” those literary devices that allow the writer to lay out the world using only the most basic of signs: the letter. Aurélien Bory replaces the blank page with a bare stage; he uses the tools of the theatre as his alphabet, to reveal their history and potential. He thus pays homage to Georges Perec, by alluding to his work rather than quoting directly from it. An homage to his literary genius, known for its playful dimension, but also to his personal history, influenced by the loss of both his parents during the Second World War. Aurélien Bory creates a moving puzzle, subtly clever, in which interlock creative euphoria, sophomoric freedom, and awareness of an upcoming and unavoidable disaster.

Aurélien Bory
Working alongside Moroccan acrobats, Chinese artists, flamenco dancers, or industrial machines, Aurélien Bory never ceases to challenge space through movement. And vice versa. Objects and bodies endure the mechanical laws of the space as much as they reveal it, bend it, distort it. A true craftsman of the stage, he uses and often hybridises its various languages (dance, theatre, circus), every single genre, from the burlesque to the tragic, and all the skills at his disposal, from traditional tools to new technologies. In addition to his own creation, he has also worked with choreographer Pierre Rigal and singer Vincent Delerm, and directed two operas. Aurélien Bory has been working on a long-time project revolving around Georges Perec's Species of Spaces, in Toulouse, where he founded the Compagnie 111 in 2000. A project punctuated by three B(r)ouillons (rough drafts) like three pages or three stages, where he and his performers offered the audience different attempts whose lessons inform this creation for the Festival d'Avignon.