At the invitation of Boris Charmatz, the visual artist Gilles Touyard conceived Programme court avec essorage [Short Cycle with Spin Dry], installation upon which two dancers (Julia Cima and Boris Charmatz) execute a performance submitted to the vagaries of a washing machine cycle and to the laws of centrifugal force. Once the start button pushed, the program unperturbably unwinds its cycle. The dancer must first enter into sync with arbitrary pauses and restarts, then get ahead of them - the only way to not be ejected, to not be put out of bounds. Taking the performers to their physical limits, this performance was first presented at the festival Danse (s) à Brest in March 1999.

“The body, if it wants to exist, must resist; dance constitutes a form of resistance: balance, speed and color added to reality by way of imposture, by way of transcendance. According to me the whirling dervish is one of the most emblematic figures of dance: one of the first reflexes of a dancer consists of working from rotation, whether it’s the circle, or points... The mechanism that I am creating generates this movement and in a certain manner, generates the forbidden: the action places the performer in a position of off balance and constrains the body to position itself differently. Suddenly, immobility and sobriety are generated by this resistance to movement. In this position the dancers’ bodies truly react to space and constraint. Their knowledge and their years of technical apprenticeship become obsolete, they are restored to the original balance of equilibrium, to the irrepressible will to express themselves at whatever cost through their body. Leaving only the essence of dance.”

Gilles Touyard