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Is it a child’s fantasy? Is it the idea of finding yourself, after all these years, with your childhood toy crane? By its sheer size, the machine creates tension with the dancer’s body. It’s also an unexpected encounter, a double act between iron and flesh. I use the arm of the mechanical digger for its functionality and dynamic, but also like a human arm which takes, pushes away, or gently coaxes! The machine’s rotation is a broad movement, spectacular, but it can also be reminiscent of a merry-go-round.

 

The digging device, whose function is to scrape, drill, transport and tip out, offers a poetic extension: a hand which carries, elevates, and protects. If I sometimes imagine the machine like a rough and imperfect human being – in the image of Boris Karloff in Frankenstein – I equally attempt to touch on the marvelous, the giddy dream of Beauty and the Beast. A machine which, in its power, elegance and beauty, can just as easily evoke the tasks of Hercules, as the industrial world painted by Fernand Léger. The mechanical digger and the dancer? An operatic beginning; a quasi-universal, lyrical and dreamlike song which could make us think of the amorous ode from a Romeo for his Juliette.

 

Dominique Boivin

 

Conception: Dominique Boivin | Assisted by: Christine Erbé | Performers: Philippe Priasso, Eric Lamy (alternately with William Defresne) | Co-production: Beau Geste and Scènes du Jura

 

Dominique Boivin experimented with acrobatic dance and classical dance during his youth. He started contemporary dance with Carolyn Carlson, and pursued it further with Alwin Nikolaïs at the C.N.D.C. (National Centre of Contemporary Dance) of Angers. In 1978, his first solo work Vol d’Oiseau won the Prix de l’Humour at the Concours de Bagnolet. In 1980 he obtained a two-year scholarship for a training course in New York, where he followed courses by Merce Cunningham and Douglas Dunn. His time in Angers also permitted him to encounter several dancers with whom he created Beau Geste (1981). He alternated between work as a performer in different companies and work as a choreographer and director. His last solo, La danse, une histoire à ma façon… (1994, revived in 2000) exposes with verve a culture of the subtle gest which underhandedly structures his choreographies.  He choreographed Orphée aux Enfers (1997) and Les Amours de Bastien et Bastienne (2002), as well as Casse Noisette for the Ballet of the Opéra National of Lyon (2001) followed by two creations for Beau Geste: Conte sur Moi (2000) and Miniatures de l’Emoi (2003). 

 

His last creations take on quite diversified worlds with Aqua ça Rrime? -a show in a swimming pool; Transports exceptionnels -a duo for a mechanical digger and a dancer; A quoi tu penses? -a piece choreographed on the monologues of the writer Marie Nimier; and Ni d’Eve, ni d’Adam a second duo with Pascale Houbin. In 2009 he created the solo Don Quichotte! solo provisoire, and with the choreographer Dominique Rebaud he revived the Revue Zoopsie Comedi (1986), of which the original costumes by Christian Lacroix are reinterpreted by the designer for this new version.  He collaborated with the musician Joëlle Léandre in Oaxaca in homage to John Cage.