What is more liberating or constraining for a body than to be confronted with a rhythm? To slide in it, to abandon itself there, to submit to it, to become undone and find its place, to transform it from the inside… It is at the heart of this paradox that Maud Le Pladec placed the motor of her creation, like a choreographic machine out of which subjective and political questions would escape. Pursuing her research on contemporary music, she delved into Democracy Against the State by Miguel Abensour a source of indetermination and excess, transformed into a reflection on how to live together.

Her artistic issues and concerns unfolding, she then applied this notion to the disturbing force of the musical piece, Dark Full Ride by Julia Wolfe, an unbridled cavalcade of toms, cymbals and bass drums, combining the power of rock and the principles of repetition and miniscule variations of post-minimalist music. Extended by the partition that was composed in response by Francesco Filidei and performed on stage by the ensemble TaCTuS, the music forms a base and a setting, a living tissue which envelops, expels, encloses or intensifies the dancers.

It is an apparatus that they derail, adapt and change the inner workings of. Subjected to the pressure of skin and muscles and of hits and steps, the stage becomes a place of exchange where figures pass through and spread out like so many allegories of political invention: large-scale fleeing in conflictual situations, singular incarnations and accidental encounters, networks of senses and references intermingle, letting the idea of a rising democracy transpire, a vector of Utopia. Between chaos and balance of forces, scrupulous partition and vital excess, Democracy offers a dance charged with states, ideas and rhythmicities and it is the medium for a polemical community where dancers and drummers strive to undo their established places. One by one, isolated, festive, occupied, multiplied, dragged, dispersed, united, their bodies transport the ferments of a wild democracy.

— Gilles Amalvi

Credits

Conception and choreography: Maud Le Pladec
Musics: Julia Wolfe (Dark Full Ride) Francesco Filidei (Silence=Death, Original composition) TaCTuS (Introduction)
Performed by: Maria Ferreira Silva, Julien Gallée-Ferré, Corinne Garcia, Mélanie Giffard, Simon Tanguy
Live music: TaCTuS Ensemble (Ying-Yu Chang, Paul Changarnier, Quentin Dubois, Pierre Olympieff)
Lights: Sylvie Mélis
Costume design: Alexandra Bertaut
Musical assistant: Gaël Desbois
Documentation: Youness Anzane
Stage design: Vincent Gadras
General manager : Fabrice Le Fur
Light manager : Nicolas Marc
Sound manager : Vincent Le Meur
Thanks to: Katerina Andreou, Nicolas Couturier, Jung Ae Kim, Konstantin Lipatov, Julie Pareau
Production : Association Léda Centre chorégraphique national 3⁄4
Co-production : Théâtre National de Bretagne – Mettre en Scèene 2013 (Rennes) – Les Subsistances (Lyon) – Maison de la danse / Biennale de la danse de Lyon (modul-ance, programme Culture de l’UE) – Théâtre Paul Eluard, scène conventionnée de Bezons (permanence artistique de la Région Ile de France) – Tanzquartier (Vienne, Autriche) – CCN de Caen Basse Normandie, Direction Héla Fatoumi / Eric Lamoureux (” l’Accueil Studio” Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication) – CCN de Franche-Comté à Belfort (” l’Accueil Studio” Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication DRAC Franche-Comté ) – CDC PARIS RESEAU / Centre de développement chorégraphique (Atelier de Paris Carolyn Carlson, L’étoile du nord, micadanses-ADDP, studio Le Regard du Cygne-AMD XXe) With the support of Arcadi (production and diffusion). Maud Le Pladec won the « Hors les Murs » prize of Institut Français in 2013 for a research around the contemporary music collective Bang on a can.
Special thanks to : Musée de la danse/CCNRB (Rennes),Centre National de Danse Contemporaine (Angers, direction Emmanuelle Huynh, 2012), Centre National de la Danse (Pantin). The Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans is supported by the Ministère de la Culture D.R.A.C Centre Val de Loire, the Ville d’Orléans, the Région Centre-Val de Loire, the Conseil Départemental du Loiret. With the help of the Institut français Ministère des affaires étrangères for international tours.