Palimpseste

Compagnie

Associated to Théâtre National, Brussels

Solo Stockhausen (1997)

Recreation May 2014

Michèle Noiret

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Palimpseste Solo Stockausen (1997)

Created and intrepreted by Michèle Noiret

Avant-première : 12 May 2014 - Scène Nationale 61, Alençon.

French Premiere : 15 May 2014 - Festival Atlantide / Le Lieu Unique, Scène Nationale de Nantes.

Belgian Premiere : 23, 24, 25, 28, 29 October 2014 - Les Brigittines, Brussels.

« Transcendence is what goes beyond the immanence of the work: when it consists of several objects (“versions”), when it is incomplete (“fragments”), indirect (copies, reproductions, descriptions, adaptations) or when it is envisaged differently depending on the location, the era, the individuals, the circumstances. The transcendence of the work is the dimension according to which one never reads the same text twice, one never sees the same picture twice. »

Digital reference: Pierre-Marc de BIASI, “GENETTE GÉRARD (1930- )”, Encyclopædia Universalis [online], accessed 23 June 2013. URL: http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/gerard-genette/

foreword

Palimpseste is based on the idea that one can create a new work by rereading an old piece and building upon the work already done. As in the palimpsest, one can make out the old beneath the new.

recreation may 2014

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statement of intent

At the time of its first production in 1997, Solo Stockhausen sprung from the desire to understand and discover the traces and the influence on my choreographic composition, of the work done with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who I met very early in my career, while also paying homage to him. I had performed this solo around fifty times by the time I met the filmmaker Thierry Knauff in October 2001. This meeting gave rise to two films, including Solo in 2004. Solo is an adaptation of the dance first performed in 1997.

Now I am returning to the live performance, this time basing myself on the 2004 film and adapting it for the stage. In doing so, I am creating a sort of palimpsest, in which the old traces of the live performance and the film will be absorbed, incorporated and reimagined in a new version.

Basing myself on the film to re-examine the live performance is part of my artistic approach, whereby the relations between choreography and cinema are sources of constant inspiration, both in terms of style and substance, in what they share and what sets them apart. The fact that this solo “underwent” a film adaptation prompted me to reimagine it on the stage.

Getting these two art forms to resonate together is something that fills me with passion and encourages me not to allow my relations with choreography to congeal in the live performance.

Michèle NoiretBrussels, June 2013

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transmission

transmission projects 2015-2016

Palimpseste # 1 - creation

Choreographed and danced by Michèle Noiret in 1997, Solo Stockhausen continues its journey. Adapted for the cinema by Thierry Knauff in 2004, it was reinvented in 2014 under the name Palimpseste. This solo will be subject to a particular transmission to the dancer and choreographer David Drouard : it will be the start of a new Palimpseste, this piece that has endured through a large part of Michèle Noiret’s career. In July, the first step in this transmission was presented as part of La belle scène Saint-Denis at the Festival Off d’Avignon 2015. The work will continue during this 2015-2016 season and end with the creation of Palimpseste #1 at Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris from 28 September to 5 October 2016.

Chambre d’écoute - creation

Based on the solo Palimpseste, Michèle Noiret will create an original piece Chambre d’écoute for the Young Ballet of Conservatoire National Supérieur Musique et Danse de Lyon on 25 and 26 January 2016 at the Amphithéâtre Culturel de l’Université de Lyon II. The piece will then be toured in Cluses, Salon de Provence, Université Lyon I, Fontainebleau, Davézieux, et La Maison de la danse de Lyon.

« Choreograph the invisible part of ourselves, and reveal this ‘off-stage’ that underlies life.» Michèle Noiret

This sentence could be the point of departure of this production which has been developed from the somewhat unusual perspective of a transfer of experience. Based on the solo Palimpseste and the notion of “choreographic characters” developed in her career, the choreographer has chosen as central theme the construction of a particular stage presence in relation to the complexity of choreographic composition.The aim is to understand the movement and to recreate it through a sensitive experience, to breathe consciousness and corporality into the body that resonates with today’s world.

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variations

on tour

Various propositions – solo, duo, films and a danced conference – can be presented in an original evening, in association with the venues and in line with their programmes.

Content of the various programmes:

- An evening in which Palimpseste and the film Solo (2004) by film director Thierry Knauff is followed by a meeting with the audience.

- A cinema evening presenting two films Thierry Knauff has made with the choreographer: Solo (2004) and à Mains Nues (2006).

- A danced conference, which recounts the meeting the choreographer had with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and the gestural notation he devised. This conference sheds new light on the solo Palimpseste, its genesis and development; it can be presented on its own or together with one of the forms presented above.

- The two pieces, Palimpseste (solo), et Palimpseste #1 (solo/duo), are also available for tour with two musicians on stage, a pianist and a clarinettist.

Film Solo (2004) 26 minutes

Solo is a cinematographic, choreographic and musical poem directed by the Belgian film director Thierry Knauff. It is based on the Solo Stockhausen choreographied and danced by Michèle Noiret. In it, a woman’s progress in the world unfolds step by step. Solitary bearer of multiple imaginings, she dances her worlds of memories, sensations, discoveries and rekindled emotions.

This film won the award for best film about art (Premio Asolo per la categoria Film sull’Arte) at Asolo, Italy in 2005, the Biennial Hainault award for an audio-visual creation (Prix Biennal hainuyer de la Création Audio-Visuelle) at Charleroi in 2005, the best fiction film (Prix du Meilleur Film de Fiction) at Namur in 2005, and the best soundtrack (Prix de la Meilleure Bande Sonore) at Namur in 2005.

Film à Mains Nues (2006) 26 minutesà Mains Nues is a film directed by the Belgian film director Thierry Knauff. It is based on Mes Jours et Mes Nuits (2002) choreographied and danced by Michèle Noiret. The film maker and the choreographer continue to explore new poetic perspectives and emotions, resorting to new visual and audio prospective.

Michèle Noiret has received the Interpretation Award for her role in this film. (Cwb, Paris 2007). à Mains Nues has also received the Best Fiction Movie Award (Bombay, Miff 2008).

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cast

Choreography and interpretation Michèle Noiret

Guest Palimpseste # 1 David Drouard

Music Karlheinz Stockhausen, “Tierkreis” for clarinet and piano, recording interpreted by Majella Stockhausen and Suzanne Stephens

Scenography Xavier Lauwers, Michèle Noiret

Light Xavier Lauwers

Costumes Azniv Afsar, Michèle Noiret

Sound and light technician Marc Lhommel, Xavier Lauwers, Christian Halkin (alternating)

Technical direction Christian Halkin

Photography Sergine Laloux

Developpement Sylvie Becquet - Paris ProdProduction & touring

Communication & press Alexandra de Laminne

Administration & coordination Cathy Zanté

Duration 30 minutes

Production Compagnie Michèle Noiret/Tandem asbl.

Coproduction and residence Scène nationale 61, Alençon.

Produced with the support of the Ministère de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service de la Danse.

The Compagnie Michèle Noiret is subsidised by the Ministère de la Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service de la Danse, and receives regular support from Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI).

Michèle Noiret is associated artist to Théâtre National de la Communauté française de Belgique, in Brussels, and member of the Académie royale de Belgique.

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press

palimpseste - avignon, july 2015

«In Tierkreis (Zodiac), a score for clarinet and piano, Michèle Noiret designs a diaphanous choreography, woven into the details, which seems to be written in the instant of her appearance. Tight little steps, faint whisperings, seemingly from distant echoes, traces of memory that pass through her body as if to reassure it.In the fullness of her art, each line she draws is of a strength, a clarity that lightens up the meanders of the choreographic language. She dances as she breathes, to the extent that one ends up forgetting that these delicate, elusive curves are not everyday movements. She gives to her body language a significance that time cannot exhaust. Like these parchments that carry under their sentences other words, rubbed out but present, she is this transitory being of infinite lightness, but also this elegant woman who displays stylised yet intelligible fragments in a fascinating choreography. Joined at the end by David Drouard, who must take up the solo, a more nervous duo is distilled, nevertheless in the subtle tonality of this musical poetry that Michèle Noiret assembles in front of our eyes.»

Agnès Izrine, dansercanalhistorique.fr, July 2015

«Michèle Noiret (...) takes up a founding solo for our great pleasure, Solo Stockhausen (1997). And pulls from it this Palimpseste, which she intends to then pass on to a male dancer, David Drouard, who also appears at the end. Backed by Tierkreis, Stockhausen’s score in resonant lace for piano and clarinet, for thirty minutes she composes a long movement in which she comes across much more as a person who dances than a performer, so much so that the dance is written on her as her own language. At first she advances in little urgent steps, whispering in silence, describing with her hands all possible curves, including microscopic ones. Then follows as much as she precedes these delicate assemblages of the most crystal-clear piano notes. Her body held, mastering slowness and transience, she cuts her body language with a remarkable lightness.» Emmanuelle Bouchez, Télérama, July 2015

«Michèle Noiret arrives sublime. French twist, high-waisted trousers and small black top fitting close to the waist. She is the incarnation of chic and she will become a black queen. She tickles her fingertips and moves compulsively with very quick little steps. Her elegance turns to aridity in very forceful passages on the ground. She borders on madness while talking to herself, a frank look on her face. David Drouard offers her a very masculine reading of this solo, establishing an anchored version of the movements. Here it is fascinating to see how the same movements are danced by different artists.»

Amélie Blaustein Niddam, toutelaculture.com, July 2015

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press

«When Michèle Noiret crosses and advances into the very interior of Palimpseste, searching for the right movement to transcribe the very essence of the music, with its attempted writing of movements and their repetition, one experiences at first hand the madness that can seize such an initiative. What makes this wrist movement or that annotation on the body correct? Her dance embraces Stockhausen’s musical style and creates a paradigm. Everything is semiotic here and when David Drouard joins her on the boards a mirror effect is created. The similitude and not the mimicry in the movements puts the transmission into perspective and, when the one who seems to be the student becomes almost the choreographer of this new style, while respecting the composer’s notes, one tells oneself that the historians of dance have a new field to observe and that the audience is not yet done with discovering and rediscovering this variation on infinity. Michèle Noiret has been able to find in David Drouard someone who will question once again Stockhausen’s vertiginous, oh and how, musical style. And it’s here a new chapter is written with Palimpseste#1.»

Laurent Bourbousson, ouvertauxpublics.fr, July 2015

palimpseste - dijon, february 2015

«Those who were lucky enough to see Solo Stockhausen in Dijon during the Art Danse festival in 1998 will recognise the dancer’s virtuosity in Palimpseste. A very precise body language of arms, wrists and hands, a dance as suspended in a breath of air. The choreographer revisits her solo in thirty minutes of pure dance to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Tierkreis. The German composer, a pioneer of electronic music who she met aged 16, with whom she studied this so characteristic gestural notation and with whom she worked as a soloist for 15 years. It’s from him she gets this astounding rapidity of hand movement, as shown in the film Solo by film director Thierry Knauff screened after the dance. On stage or on screen, Michèle Noiret dances Stockhausen’s music, translating with the body the musical variations: a body language to be seen and seen again, like a score, for our greatest pleasure.»

Bienpublic.com, February 2015

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The choreographer Michèle Noiret joined Maurice Béjart’s Mudra School in 1976, where she studied for three years. It was there she met Karlheinz Stockhausen, who spoke to her in 1977 about a project for a solo dance performance incorporated into his music. After leaving Mudra, she went on to study the composer’s system for the notation of gestures, and worked with him as a soloist for 15 or so years. This collaboration gave rise to three works. Forming part of the Donnerstag aus Licht opera, the three acts were performed together for the first time in 1981 at La Scala, Milan, with Luca Ronconi as director and Gae Aulenti as set and costume designer. It was next produced in 1985, at London’s Covent Garden, with Michaël Bogdanov and Maria Bjornson. After meeting Pierre Droulers in 1981, Michèle Noiret worked on several projects, including La Jetée (1983). She set off to explore the New York dance scene in 1982, where she was suitably impressed with the members of the Trisha Brown dance company and their “contact improvisation”.On her return to Belgium she set up her own company in 1986, creating and interpreting the solo La Crevêche, and a duet with the same name with Jean-Christian Chalon. At the same time, she continued to tour throughout the world with Karlheinz Stockhausen, performing pieces from the Donnerstag aus Licht opera . Comprising eight soloists – singers, musicians and dancers - this concert version of the work was produced in various cities, including France (Fondation Maeght in St Paul-de-Vence, Paris Autumn Festival, Salzburg Festival), Warsaw, Moscow and Rio de Janeiro. The work is used a great deal to teach the composer’s system of notation.Michèle Noiret’s chorographical skills became increasingly prominent as underscored by Vertèbre (1989), Louisiana Breakfast (1990), danced and choreographed with Bud Blumenthal, with whom she worked for a dozen or so years, L’Espace Oblique (1991), Avna (1992), Tollund (1994), Les Plis de la nuit (1996), which for first time incorporated filmed images, Paysage promenade and Hisolo (1997). These were followed up by Solo Stockhausen (1997), which Michèle Noiret performed to the accompaniment of Stockhausen’s Tierkreis score, as a tribute to the composer, and <En Jeu> (1998) where she and the composer Todor Todoroff investigated the opportunities offered by the interactive technologies of sound.

Michèle Noiret

biography

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Accepting Geneviève Druet’s invitation in the year 2000 to become choreographer in residence at the Théâtre Les Tanneurs in Brussels, she created In Between (2000) and Twelve Seasons (2001), while enlisting the aid of Paolo Atzori for the images and interactive set designs and Todor Todoroff for the sound. She joined forces with Todor Todoroff again in 2002, plus the videomaker Fred Vaillant, to produce a project with a long-term legacy: “Prospectives” (2002- 2004), which intensified the investigation into the decomposition of space and the incorporation of interactive sound and image technologies. This process gave rise to three works: Mes jours et mes nuits (2002), Sait-on jamais ? (2003) and Territoires intimes (2004), as opportunities for asserting an innovative choreographic language, while developing fresh complementary relationships between dance and technologies. She joined forces with the same team in 2005 to create Les Familiers du labyrinthe, at the request of Brigitte Lefèvre, the Paris National Opera’s Director of Dance. This work for 15 dancers also involved Alain Lagarde as set and costume designer. She met the film director Thierry Knauff in 2002 and went on to produce two films with him: Solo (2004) and à Mains Nues (2006), described as cinematic, choreographic and musical poems. Next on the list of achievements was Chambre blanche (2006),a restrained, pared-down piece for female dancers. This performance has been awarded the Theatre-Dance critics prize of the French Community of Belgium for the best dance performance of the 2006/2007 season.

An associate artist since the 2006-2007 season with Belgium’s Théâtre National, managed by Jean-Louis Colinet, she created Les Arpenteurs (2007), a production for seven dancers and the six musicians of the Percussions de Strasbourg, with original music composed by François Paris. Now, in 2007, she is reunited with Fred Vaillant and Todor Todoroff in De deux points de vue, (2007), a duet for dancers from the Ballet de Lorraine, directed by Didier Deschamps, where she relies on state-of-the-art interactive tools to develop a cinematic dance which takes us into the depths of the human being. In DEMAIN (2009), multiform choreographic piece for four assistants, one cameraman and one dancer, Michèle Noiret loans out her body to a character gripped by the unacceptable in the world. This performance has been awarded the Theatre-Dance critics prize of the French Community of Belgium for the best dance performance of the 2008/2009 season. In July 2010, she was commissioned by Bernard Foccroulle to write La primultime rencontre for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. In 2010 Michèle Noiret also presented Minutes opportunes, a choregraphical thriller for four dancers. That was followed in May 2011 by Hôtel Folia a piece, commissioned by Frédéric Flamand, for 10 dancers of the Ballet National de Marseille. Michèle Noiret also wrote a short solo for Thomas Lebrun, part of Six Order Pieces, danced by the choreographer and presented at Rencontres chorégraphique internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis. In the piece Hors-champ (2013), Michèle Noiret continues to deepen the ties between performing arts and cinema through the question : “a hallucinatory reality?”. In May 2014, Michèle Noiret has chosen to revisit Solo Stockhausen (1997), an important piece in her repertoire, under the title of Palimpseste. In 2015 and 2016, Michèle Noiret and her team are continuing their research into dance-cinema, with the “stage short-film” project Radioscopies (2015) and L’Escalier Rouge (2016).

Michèle Noiret is associated artist to Théâtre National de la Communauté française de Belgique, in Brussels, and member of the Royal Academy of Belgium.

biography

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contacts

The Compagnie Michèle Noiret is subsidised by the Ministère de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service de la Danse, and receives regular support from Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI).

Michèle Noiret is associated artist to Théâtre National de la Communauté française de Belgique, Brussels, and member of the Académie Royale de Belgique.

Compagnie Michèle Noiret

Artistic Direction

DevelopmentProduction & touring

Communication & press

Administration & coordination

Technical direction

58 rue de la Lys1080 Brussels, Belgium+32 2 425 89 37 www.michele-noiret.be

Michèle Noiret

Sylvie Becquet - Paris Prodsbparisprod@gmail.commobile +33 (0)6 71 04 49 83

Alexandra de Laminnealexandra@michele-noiret.be

Cathy Zantécathy@michele-noiret.be

Christian Halkinchristian@michele-noiret.be