Du Vivant Sous Les Plis
Prélude à l'exposition
(Prelude to the exhibition)
World premiere October 6, 2017
at the Maison de l’Étudiant, Le Havre
Conception: Margot Dorléans & Patrice Balvay
Dance: Margot Dorléans
Drawings: Patrice Balvay
Lighting: Grégoire Desforges
Running time: 40 min
With support from: Un Été au Havre (A summer in Le Havre), the city of Le Havre, the University of
Le Havre-Normandie
Special thanks to Le Phare-Centre Chorégraphique du Havre Normandie for hosting me in
the Accueil Studio program.
Prélude à l’exposition (Prelude to the exhibition) came from the encounter between Margot Dorléans, dancer and choreographer, and Patrice Balvey, painter and artist. They share a common experience in Japan.
It is the connection between the great drawings, drawn with the entire body and dance taken into account. In her practice Margot Dorléans links the internal space of the body and the space in which it moves. Based on three drawings from Balvay’s series “Drawing by Walking,” the dancer has conceived three dances. This may also be seen as an in situ installation.
Prélude à l’exposition is a performance piece -installation, a blend of dance and drawing. The choreographic and the graphic work in the same plane, dialoguing and interweaving. From the fragility of the paper tacked up with two thumbtacks to the density of the dancer’s body in movement, between the floor and the ceiling, the air and the earth, lightness and heaviness; between the drawing on the wall, the body in the space, we invent a common language where the work of one artist enhances and illuminates the other.
Intentions
Like an exhibition which is mounted in real time, 3 large format drawings, human-sized, are brought onstage like partners. Each drawing, protected and contained in a box, is revealed to the audience as it takes its place in the space.
The manipulation of the boxes, the protective papers and the drawings themselves offer a number of scenic structures, plastic and acoustic elements which allows the dance to be a prolongation of the drawing. Each drawing is interpreted in movement and the spectator is free to look at the dancer and the drawing, or both.
The 3 drawings are different from each other, so the dances are different too.
- Blue drawing on white paper, between lightness and heaviness; the body is caught between them, drawn upward but also downward, with fluid movement, swerving movements. Open space.
- White drawing on black paper, fragility and a hesitation in drawing the lines, a body seeking suspension, deep movement, controlled traveling. The body is confined in a small space.
- Reddish orange drawing on white paper, abundance, a dense line drawn, with an agitated body, fire, energetic movement, being moved by an external force. A contained space which gradually opens up.
During the performance, Patrice Balvay is onstage, drawing, repeating the interactive process between the movement, danced and drawn: the drawing inspires the dance and vice-versa. However the drawings created onstage remain invisible for the audience. They are like notation which may serve as a starting point for another series of drawings. This implies a further, perhaps infinite exchange between the body in movement and the hand holding the drawing implement or pencil.
The stage space is constructed gradually, the drawings and boxes beome an installation which in theory could linger in the space and time.
As an interdisciplinary project, Prélude à l’exposition can be performed in a stage space or in an exhibition space like a gallery. As it is an in situ work it can be adapted to each individual space; and we are interested in not being forced into a space labeled as a dance or exhibition space.
Genesis
Having being invited by Véronique Bui, director of the “Europe/Asia” research project: stories, the concept of re-use and rewrites at the University of Le Havre-Normandie, Patrice Balvay, a painter in residence at the Fort of Tourneville in Le Havre, presented his residency at the Tokyo Wonder Site, created during Un Eté au Havre (A Summer in Le Havre) 2017. Over a 2 month period he alternately walked and sketched in Tokyo, resulting in a series of drawings (Drawing by Walking) which was finished when he was back in Le Havre.
Patrice Balvay talks about a physical, mental and emotional round trip, transcribed in his drawings. For him the act of drawing involves his entire body. To establish a dialogue with another discipline and to embody the idea of the re-write, the subject of the conference, several of his drawings are interpreted by the dancer and choreographer Margot Dorléans. Aware of the process which had guided the artist to draw and the story associated with each drawing, she is inspired as much by observation as the physical imprint of the works themselves. The piece takes the form of an installation inside which the artist and the dancer move together.
Processus de travail
The plastician’s practice of Patrice Balvay is based on the body: represented in painting, or used as a tool in drawing. The paper for the drawing is based on the human body and the space, for example the height of the wall where he was working in Tokyo and the width of the chosen roll of paper determined the format of the Drawing by Walking series: 2 x 1 meter. The dimension determines the space and the temporality.
Patrice Balvay’s drawing process is like that of a sculptor and his stone: no going back, each drawing is an experience. In Drawing by Walking, Balvay made drawing into a performance piece: in a given time a movement is repeated, taken apart, broken or improvised. The dancing then becomes a natural prolongation; in drawing or in dance, the body imprinting and laying out its track on the paper or in the space.
Margot Dorélans, in her own work process, listed the words which came to her upon seeing the drawings. She then asked how they would resonate in the body as a source of material and physical structure, relating to the drawing and then developed the dynamic of each dance.