After 50 ans de danse – a hybrid work, somewhere between an alphabet book of forms by Merce Cunningham and a kaleidoscope of recovered gestures – Boris Charmatz proposes a new borderline choreographic object: a perceptive hologram for 24 dancers and 25 movements. Levée – like a suspension of time, of the tension of meaning, of the rules that organize perception: a blurring of the way one looks at the circulation, the passing, the appropriation of the gestures that drift among a group. In a hypnotic round, a mosaic of simultaneous actions sliding from body to body, the dancers try to produce a mirage: a subliminal impression emerging from a continuous series of states. It builds itself up, becomes undone, comes together again, condenses, accumulates, forms a nucleus, lines, folds — a living matter, solitary and collective, where each dancer is “mobile within the mobile element”.

But how does it work? How does it evolve without imploding? Moved by a void, animated by the lag between the number of actions and that of dancers, the layout generates itself on its own — giving the impression of a permanent dissolve. Exposed to duration, ceaselessly building itself up and dissolving, this variable-geometry structure summons up a floating attention: vocal ensemble to be contemplated in one look, and choreography composed with a multitude of interlocked, swivelling, repeated events; dance which simply takes place, and complex game of mechanics, in constant oscillation. With Levée des conflits, Boris Charmatz invents a “dance hole” that absorbs the gaze. A palindrome-dance, to be read in all directions. A choreographic canon, looking for the image of a utopia.

Gilles Amalvi

The movie Levée is based on Levée des conflits.