Mise en page 1 - Pôle Arts Sciences Société

The PASS presents
the colloquium
Danse et Science,
between forms and chaos
The acts of the symposium
March 28th and 29th
at ENS and aux Echappées Belles - Lyon
The PASS thanks all its partners and
quite particulary the orginzation
committee of the colloquium
Anne BROUX-MORET
Michel HALLET EGHAYAN
Jean-François LE MARECHAL
Aude RIOM
Philippe VERRIELE
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Introduction of the colloquium
by Philippe Verrièle
Critic, art historian.
A
Sccording to its interest, a rubanée agate, this hard stone in the regular
motives can be arrested as an ornament even an aesthetic curiosity or a model
of organization of the reality which questions the scientist. The latter will see in
this stone the geologic expression of these phenomena of temporal or spatial
auto-organization about which it is a question of finding the laws. In these two
readings, the one poetics and the other scientist, participate both to define the
agate.
The stake in this colloquium is the same nature. By leaving however not of an
object, but an artistic practice : the dance.
Through broadcastings, transformations and hazards, terms which define for
example the lines of Liesegang, the reality knows Certain way of getting
organized who questions the choreographer more than of other one. The
composer of dance is among the artists the one the material of which is the time
and the space - My Japanese - and the way of organizing the movement there
cannot save the question of the fate.
For reasons of relations in the representation - It is the posture of Cunningham
- or of a conception of the work - as at Anna Halprinpour to stay in the American
domain-, the question of the organization of the dances cannot avoid that of the
improvisation - let us let us limit we for the moment to this term-, reproducing
as by a renewed use, the questioning of the scientists on phenomena of
auto-organization. Spontaneous, immediate, alive: the adjective qualifying this
composition can vary, The question is left by this shaping arisen from the gush
of the improvisation.
By confronting the scientific and artistic approaches, this colloquium wants to
contribute to a vision different from the notion of organization of the reality by
using the dance as referent and the dancer as witness. Because the latter, due
to its particular place and of course favored in the process, intervenes in the
experience and thus on the result of the experience.
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From Robert Swinston (eg choreography Director of the Merce Cunningham
Dance Company; director of the CNDC of Angers) which will explain through the
example of the American choreographer how the fate can integrate the
composition to Etienne Ghys who will develop his mathematical approach of
the chaos, by way of Eliane Mirzabekiantz (responsible for the training in the
notation of the movement Benesh in the CNSD of Paris) who will confront the
choreographic notation with the practices of the improvisation, it is a crossing
of choreographic and scientific looks which will ask the question of the fate as
the materials and as organization.
Philippe Verrièle
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“Of the chaos in the order” by Jean-François Mattéi,
Philosopher, emeritus professor at the University of Nice.
Page 6
“The practice of the fate, how the Fate
can join the composition?”by Robert Swinston,
Manager of the National Center of Contemporary dance of
Angers, member of the THAT of “Merce Cunningham Trust”.
Page 18
“Choreographic Composition” by Myriam Gourfink,
Choreographer, person in charge of
the training program of the Abbey of Royaumont.
Page 22
Etienne Ghys’s intervention around its movie “Chaos”,
Member of the Academy of Science,
the study leader in mathematics (CNRS – ENS Lyon)
Page 41
“How the Benesh partition reveals the composition and
testifies of the improvisation” by Eliane Mirzabekiantz,
Person in charge of the training in the notation of the
movement Benesh to the Higher National Conservatory
for Music and of Dance of Paris.
Page 42
Pablo Jensen’s intervention,
CNRS study leader -in the physics lab of the ENS of Lyon.
Page 47
“Neuronal Bases of the nonverbal communication”
by Mathilde Menoret,
PhD student in Neurosciences and Cognitive Sciences.
Page 67
Round table with
Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet,
Master of education and research at the Faculty
of social and political Science of Lausanne,
Philippe Verrièle,
Critic and art historian,
Michel Hallet Eghayan,
Choreographer,
Jean-François Mattéi,
Philosopher.
Page 84
Conclusions of the colloquium by a dancer and
Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet on his observations.
Page 108
“2nd correspondance”
Page 116
the “PASS”
Page 118
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“Of the chaos in the order”
by Jean-François Mattéi
Philosopher, emeritus professor at the University of Nice.
The question which settled to the philosophers and to the scholars, but
also to the poets and, more generally, to the artists, is the one of the passage
of the chaos. In the order. We can suppose, indeed, that is that the cosmic order
exists of quite Eternity - But then, how understand this sustainability of an order
which would be auto creative? Or that the cosmic order arose from a previous
chaos, as we see it at Hésiode. A first “béance” preceded the appearance of
the world, and it is only then, after the wild war between the titanic night
strengths, that appeared the day divinities, with Zeus and the Olympian, which
cleaned up universe.
It’s the same for the arts. How does the work arise from a preliminary
absence, even from a confusion of often unfortunate human experiments. How
was Céline able to write the Journey at the end of the night to leave of a
mixture of war, violence and abjection which is sublimated by writing ? The
same question settles for the dance. How the dancer manages, from gestures
and movements of the human body, to stylize a rhythm and to impose an order
on what, before its entrance, was an unpredictable chaos. Unpredictable. Such
is the mystery of the creation which, of an initial disorder, reaches to establish
an order by allowing the movement to cut and to reveal the space in measure
of its deployment.
Jean-François Mattéi
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Thanks to Michel Hallet Eghayan to have invited the philosopher to
open the debate, especially on a subject as the chaos, because the main theme
of this colloquium on the dance and on the science deals with the idea of
chaos, thus the idea of space.
I prepared you a small personal essay on the notion of chaos and order in which
I shall take some examples in the art generally and in the dance in particular,
being understood that if the chaos exists, if we can clean up it, this is valid for
all the disciplines, the religious scientists, the philosophy, and naturally artistic.
I would want to begin by noticing that the central question of the philosophy
but also in the science in the form of reasoning that is of a tight argumentation,
a logical argumentation, since Greek invented logos, that is at the same time a
word, a settled exchange, “dia logique” or “dia logos”, and who can be
demonstrated from the mathematical proofs of Pythales, Pythagoras, and
those of the Greek men of science. But this is also valid for the various religions,
either this time this in the form of dialogue or of dialectic, but in the form of
myths and of legendary narratives which try to understand the origin. “ Ex
arques “ as we say in Greek, that is from the principle, “Arques” in Greek, at the
same time the principle, the origin, the beginning but at the same time the
command. Monarchy, command, research for a principle of an original society.
Thus the question that arises so much in the philosophy, in the science, in
religions and in the art, and finally in the man is: how what is not still, what did
not appear yet either is, can it reach the being or the life, or how what is
anything can it become something? You doubtless know the sentence of
Leibniz, philosopher, physicist, mathematician, inventor of the integral calculus,
wondering why is t there something and not nothing. It was the big question for
Leibniz, the question of metaphysics if we want but also of physics or
astrophysics, what there is before “Big Bang”, and if “Big Bang” there is a big
“bang”, why there was this initial explosion, what is that there was a previous «
initialité » still in this initial explosion.
While it is about the world - how the world appeared ?-, that it is about the man
- how the man appeared from the human beings ? - and if we go back up even
more before - how the human being appeared on earth? - we cannot refrain
from wondering about the way these appearances took place.
There are two types of answer. Where well these appearances took place in a
continuous way, in a kind of progress of the cosmos in the life, and the life in
the humanity, by way of the bestiality, either on the contrary what is what there
were creations or intermittent appearances. And same Leibniz points out that
there is a labyrinth of the human thought. The big labyrinth for Leibniz, it is the
labyrinth of the continuous and the intermittent. We see it with the light which
is at the same time of continuous nature - it is a wave - and cease-, corpuscles,
photons. Thus what is that the continuous can be bound in the intermittent, and
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how what is that all this appeared ? All at once of a single jet, as a geyser or,
gradually, but gradually from which ?
You will notice that the question of the origin of things, also settles to the poets
and to the writers when they end up alone in front of what Mallarmé called the
“paper space which its whiteness defends”.
I show you a “paper space” that one my given just now: the presentation
display of the colloquium to take notes. You are named Marcel Proust, you are
in front of your paper sheet which is blank not as we say it generally, “the
virgin paper that its whiteness defends”, distorts quotation of Mallarmé, it is
necessary to return to the text, it is the “paper space which its whiteness
defends”. The paper is white but it is empty, and at the moment there is not still
“In search of lots time”, nor “ Near at Swann”. How the inspiration, if I may say,
came to Marcel Proust ? The poet, that is Mallarmé, wrote well the space,
because it is exactly from the space, in philosophic term of the nothingness,
that the writing is going to realize this miracle to create the plenitude of the
work. Where there was some space, there is now of the height. Several
thousand pages.
How what is that these pages appeared ? Nothing seemed to announce “In
search of lots time” when Proust puts himself in its desk, as me, and begins to
write “For a long time I am early lying”, first sentence of “In search of lost time”.
It was necessary to find it. It is almost the most famous opening of novels since
a few centuries.
You know that a novel takes place almost on its first sentence and on its front
page. But how the first verse, as said the poet, has t it given? Then he answers
“the first towards us gave by the gods and then, it is necessary to work”. Thus
we begin with the divinity in a way or with the inspiration of the muses about
which I shall speak directly.
In the same way nothing had gone out of Michel - angel’s brush when it beganto
draw the frescoes of the Chapel Sixtine. The Chapel Sixtine was otherwise
virgin or empties, because there were already paintings, but they will be erased
so that Michel-Ange begins his work. Nothing also not meadow existed to
“Giselle” before Adolphe Adam composes the music of the romantic ballet and
before Jean Corelli and Jules Perrot establish the choreography. Today
“Giselle” became a canonical dance, the first classic choreography of the story
of the dance, but previously there was nothing, in any case nothing which
announced “Giselle”. Then we can say obviously that the notebook of “Giselle”
was inspired by the German poet Henri Heine, and obviously especially since
by Théophile Gautier, but where from did these two artists hold at first their
inspiration?
This is true of all the creators. When you question them or when they are
engaged in you, they point out that the inspiration is for them a native
strangeness which urges them to create, to write, to compose of the music or
the dance. I end with Proust. When Proust having fallen asleep - “For a long
time I am early lying” - wakes up in its cot and opens eyes, he wonders “where
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from come the things which surround me“. He wakes up around midnight, one
o’clock in the morning, “ following a dream “ he says and he points out from the
front page of his work : “The fact remains that when I so woke up, my spirit
stirring to look without succeeding in it, namely where I was, everything turned
around me in the darkness, the things, countries, years”. In other words, for
Proust or for the young person Proust, everything turns around the child who
wakes up, who wonders where he is.
For the philosopher, for the poet and soon the scholar, everything turns around
this initial space where from goes naitre the world and with the world, the
subject which thinks. That’s why Proust says “everything turns around me,
countries even, France, Spain, under an abstract abstract or semi shape, and
he wonders where he is”. This initial space, Greek gave him his name, they
called it Chaos or “Khaos”, if we pronounce it in the Greek by ringing the final
sigma.
We find this term of “Khaos” which became classic in our language to appoint
something mixed, of muddled, vague, of jumble as said the Bible, in the Old
Testament. We find this term of Chaos at the same time at Hésiode in “The
theogony”, that is literally in the begetting of the gods or in the birth of the gods,
“theo gonie”, in the verse 116. It is the first time when we find this word, writes
in any case. Can being he was orally used before Hésiode but as Hésiode is
with Homère most anicien known western poet, it is the first time when we see
appearing this term of “Chaos”. Then “Khaos” or “Chaos” if we pronounce it
French-style is connected to the verb “kaineô” which means opening. Open the
mouth, be gaping. It is the distant origin of the béance at Lacan, when Lacan
speaks in psychoanalysis of “Béance” with one B capital letter. It is an open
mouth and it is also connected to the noun “chasma” which means
opening or vacuum, abyss, a kind of black hole (if we modernize in modern
physics).
I so give you this appearance of the word “Chaos” which is at the same time
the appearance of the world, in the verses(worms) 116 and 117 of “The
Theogony”, towards become canonical, poem of the VIIIth century before JC,
thus 400, 450 years before Platon and Aristote. It is really very archaic. I remind
to you or I indicate it to those who do not know Hésiode, otherwise of name,
that Hésiode was a simple farmer who, when he had some time, made poetries
as “The Theogony” or “as The works and in daytime”. In the poem of “The
Theogony” this is what he says : “above all was abyss”, translation of the
“Beautiful Letters” which translates “Khaos” by abyss, but we could translate
by space, by opening, but especially not by “chaos”, because “Chaos” would
not be a translation but the resumption of the Greek word. As you do not know,
and I either, and nobody knows, what Hésiode could understand in the VIIIth
century before JC in the word “Khaos”, let us keep the idea of opening, open
mouth, and I am going to re-specify dircetly what is this “mouth”.
Thus before, everything was “Khaos” or damages then, the “earth in the wide
sides”, “Gaïa” or “Ge” in Greek, mean the earth as cosmic power, not still as
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planet, because Hésiode is not an astrophysicist, it has no telescope. “Earth in
the wide sides, and let us not forget it, love, “Eros”. In other words there is all
the same an energy psychic as would say Freud when he speaks about Eros, a
cosmic eroticism which is simply this kind of energy which browses the
universe, as soon as the energy went out of the Chaos. I remind you these
verses 116 and 117; “above all was Khaos then the earth in the wide sides Gaïa-, then love - Eros -” and Hésiode is held there. Otherwise still in the verse
123, he still resumes the word of “Chaos” thus it has only 2 occurrences of the
word “Chaos” at Hésiode there to appoint this kind of initial space or this initial
opening, of black hole I there said is a moment by when all the things arise. And
this “Khaos”, all the specialists of Hésiode or the astrophysics of this period if
I may say, which is a mythical astrophysics obviously, point out that this
“Chaos” is not at all an indisctinct mixture. There is no mixture because there is
nothing. Nothing can mix with anything. So that there is mixture there already
has to have something and in Khaos, there is nothing. It is just a little as in the
quantum mechanics, it is a quantum space where from the first corpuscles are
going to appear. It is a primitive opening from which is going to be born the
world.
This work, “The Theogony” of Hésiode results it even from a primitive space
which was already in the thought of Hésiode before it begins writing its poem.
It is necessary to wonder how this simple farmer of Beotia, thus a beotian (in
modern French somebody who is not very smart), how this boetian which was
not thus very smart, he was able to have the idea to make a genealogy of the
universe from the nothing. Yet he points out that the space which lives in him
and what he expresses in the form of chaos, results from another voice than it
feels in himself which is the voice of muses, héliconiennes muses called so
because they are on a mountain which we call the Helicon. And héliconiennes
muses inspired him by allowing him to glorify what is, what will be and what
was, that is the world. What is, the present, what will be, the future and what
was, the past, that is any things. Thus the time he even is exposed by
“héliconiennes” muses, muses which are goddesses because they are the girls
of Zeus and Mnémosyne, that is of the Memory with one M capital letter. Thus
they have the memory of everything, Hésiode has the memory of not much. It
is a simple farmer but muses live in him, 9 muses, of which the muse obviously
of the dance a word of which I shall say later. Muses are of late birth because
they are the goddesses arisen from the union of Zeus and from Mnémosyne, yet
that is the end of “The Theogony” and at the beginning there is no Zeus, either
muses, or memory, or time, or world, there is a space or an abyss.
Before muses come to blow to the poet, to the farmer-poet, his “Theogony”
which is the oldest conception of the birth of the universe which we have in
West, there are obviously other theogonies in Mesopotamia and in India but
which are rather close to that of Hésiode. The difference of that of Hésiode with
compared with the Indian or Mesopotamian cosmogonies, that is finally Asian,
it is because he already tries to tidy up, he tries to build a logical speech, it
“logos” finds itself in a “muthos” that is in a myth. Previously, before muses, and
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thus before Hésiode, and thus before men, there were other lineages of night
and diurnal divinities, in particular the race of the “Titans” who are males, and
“Titanium” which are females, which are thus titanic, that is cosmic strengths.
What we call gods or goddesses when we take these old cosmogonical myths
is in fact cosmic strengths before being humanized goddesses or humanized
gods as such.
The race of the “Titans” on one side, the race of the “Olympian” of other one.
The race of the “Titans” is the night-race. In a famous movie, “Star Wars”, it
looks like it is the dark side of the strength - to show you that the myths are
always present - and obviously Jupiter and the Olympian, the Olympian which
are on the Olympe - the diurnal divinities are. In the root Zeus, in the
nominative, you have the Indo-European root “Za” which means the light and at
the same time the life because the life cannot exist without the light, without the
photons in a way which give it its life. And the genitive of Zeus, you
doubtless know it, in Greek it is “Dios” as a supplement to name and “Dios”
gave in Latin “Deus” which gave in French “God”. Thus when you say “god’s
name”, you say “name of Zeus”, as English “by Jove”, but this time English
takes Jupiter. Jupiter, it is Zeus Pater, thus it is always this idea of an initial form
of life which is not totally initial because Zeus arose from divinities previous to
the Titans.
In other words the day was born at night, or the order arose from the chaos. We
see it very easily at Hésiode. Thus in the principle of any thing there is a kind of
dark space because the light did not appear yet, the light apparaitra with Zeus
and with him in the daytime, because I forgot to say to you that when you read
your daily paper, you read the newspaper of Zeus, because a daily paper, the
morning Figaro or Liberation - I speak not about “Le Monde” which is an
evening daily paper-, but a daily paper, it is “quoti dies” and “dies”, it is the
same word as “deus”, thus the day is noted or connoted as light, essentially.
And thus when we say the daylight in French, we make a pleonasm simply.
There is no night light, otherwise that of the stars but it is not a light by
definition.
Then Victor Hugo will resumethis image of a “mouth of shade” in the last poem
of the “Ponderings” which is exactly called “ what says the “Mouth of shade”.
Victor Hugo goes out one evening from his home and there, he hears a voice to
speak to him at night, thus he supposes that this voice comes from a mouth;
and he calls it the “Mouth of shade” with a capital letter to Mouth, as if it was
the night which speaks to him, or god who speaks to him, or any divinity which
speaks to him, a muse which speaks to him, he calls that it “ Mouth of shade”.
The first verse of what says the “Mouth of shade”, it is : “This abyss where the
abyss in the abyss bottom”. See that he still uses the metaphor of Hésiode. This
abyss where from the world results, where the abyss in the abyss bottom, a
kind of structure in abyss as will say it later André Gide by adding one to abyss
to look smart - and the students at the Ecole normale supérieure today, when
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they make an essay to obtain “philosophy aggregation” speak to you of the
“putting it abymes of a theater”, that looks smart ! While abyss spells with one
“i” but it is André Gide who wrote abyme with one. The putting in abysses, it is
the theater in the theater, as for example in Hamlet, in the 2nd act, Hamlet
makes represent the death of his father by comedians thus you have the play in
the play. Structure in abysses not to say “tail of fish” ! What says “the Mouth of
shade” by the word “universal abyss” - Towards 1 - and that ends by “the word
of an angel” - Victor Hugo is religious, he is Christian, thus he does not use any
more the mythical metaphors of Hésiode. It comes 27 centuries later, and it is
an angel who speaks to him and who says to him, it is the last word of the
poem: “beginning”. The last word is “beginning”; and the first word is “abyss”,
of what says “the Mouth of shade”. Thus we see in this very long poem that we
go of the abyss at first, we decline because the abyss is the beginning. The
beginning of the poem is the word “damage” and the last word of the poem is
“beginning”. See as Hugo structured his sentence? Which just goes to show
that he was wrong the one who said that “the best poet it is Victor Hugo,
regrettably”. It was Gide, exactly.
Thus the chaos is beginning. Hésiode settles the first one the question of the
beginning because when you read the text you notice that he does not content
with putting into verse what muses say to him, 9 héliconiennes muses, he tries
to think of the beginning. Thus for whom resumes things at first and to return to
philosophers closer from us, Hegel will say at the beginning of the
“Phenomenology of the spirit” or of “the Encyclopedia” that what matters in
philosophy, that is for him in science - Hegel does not distinguish the
philosophy of the universal science-, it is the beginning. A philosopher must
know how to begin. A “student at the Ecole normale supérieure”, Ulm or Lyon,
must know how to make an introduction and it is the most difficult to make.
Know how to begin, where to begin, not simply to make an introduction to
please the Vice-chancellor or the professor, but for enter in the heart of the
matter. Victor Hugo to get to the heart of the subject by beginning with the
beginning.
There was a stock phrase in Greek which we find at Platon and who was a
proverb: “It is necessary to begin with Hestia” because Hestia was the divinity
of the beginning, the divinity of the Earth exactly. Hestia is what gave at Latin
the vestals, this divinity of the Earth is the first one for whom we made a
libation when we made a sacrifice. Even when we made a sacrifice to the gods
as Zeus, Hera, Poséïdon, we began at first with Hestia who is more discreet as
all the women with regard to the male gods who are a little as
“Schwarzenegger”. Imagine Zeus, imagine Poséïdon, they are absolutely
extraordinary cosmic strengths. We can imagine that was the statue of Zeus in
Olympia which was to be 10 meters high marble and golden made by Phidias,
in the twilight that had to give you a kind of blow of stop, bewilderment in a way.
Hestia is much more discreet. She stays up the fire, the fire it is the earth,
exactly because the earth is going to allow by the life, by the energy, the men
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to be born. And it is the Earth which is going to create exactly Gaïa or “Ge“, who
is going to make naitre in a sexual way, because the initial black hole, that is the
space, did not make born in a sexual way Gaia. It planned beside hitself the
Earth. Khaos planned beside hitself the Earth and Gaia is going to make to born
in a sexual way, by fissiparity if I may say, Ouranos, who is translated
generally by starry sky, that is the World.
Ouranologie. The starry sky to the world. Thus at first, the gaping opening
where from the earth comes to appear, is in hiding in his turn, safe basis for all
the alive. That’s why during centuries and centuries before Copernic we thought
that the earth was fixed, since Hésiode, and not in movement around the sun.
Phenomenologically as will say it the philosopher Husserl, the earth does not
move. Yet I remind you that Husserl was at the same time a mathematician and
a physicist, yet he says to you that, as Copernic, phenomenologically the earth
does not move. Moreover you feel it good, the earth does not move under your
feet. Lyon is not on a seismic coat disturbing as Nice or as San Francisco. The
earth, apparently does not move and thus the earth is, as, says Hésiode, safe
basis for all the alive (towards 117). Thus the earth is going to engender
Ouranos who at once lies down on the earth, doubtless to thank it - that begins
with a cosmic incest-, the son Ouranos lies down(goes to bed) on her mother
and begins to fertilize it during periods and periods, centuries and centuries,
millenniums set of the millenniums, without letting take out anybody, thus it
gives birth inside if I may say, without gaping opening, until Cronos - nothing to
do “in time chronological” - is going to take a billhook in the stomach of her
mother and is going to cut the testicles of his father Ouranos which are going
to fall in the water, in the sea, - Okéanos - the ocean, to form a foam which says
itself in Greek “sperma” - the sperm - which is going to give Aphrodite whose
exact name is “the Foam”. Thus the love, the goddess Aphrodite, is born by
some sperm of Ouranos cut by his son Cronos to free her mother Gaïa who
finally sighs, freed of an important weight. And it is the same Cronos which is
going to engender in his/her turn Zeus, the first one of the Olympian. And it is
with Zeus that for first time the day powers, the diurnal powers, appear, so
succeeding the Titans, the night powers. What is remarkable in this theogony,
term which thus means the begetting of the gods but at time when cosmic
power, it is that it evokes from the beginning of the poem the beginning of any
thing. The beginning of the poem settles in a way on the beginning of things.
This origin also costs for the poems and the works of art embodied by the
muses among which exactly Terpsichore. The name of Terpsichore which is the
goddess of the dance, means in Greek, the one who appreciates the dance “Chora”-. Stemming from Zeus as his sisters, Terpsichore is a late goddess who
is not thus at first. The dance is not at first. None of the arts is at first for
Hésiode. The arts are late, what is first once again, it is Khaos and Gaïa. Thus
the beginning is unique, at the beginning.
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If we say that the Chaos is the beginning, as says it Hésiode but how said also
Victor Hugo, as also says it can be the contemporary astrophysicists who
imagine a beginning absolved for the universe, what is that this absolute
beginning is really absolved, in other words is there something before Big Bang
? A physicist will say to you that without doubts today or tomorrow.
In any case the beginning is thought by Hésiode as unique, there is only a
single chaos and a continuation of chaos. But of this unique chaos goes naitre
effectively the duality because of the unique chaos nait the duality of Gaia quite
below and Ouranos at the very top. Thus it is of this “Mouth of shade’ that goes
naitre the World, and with him, as will say Platon in Timée, time. Because the
World is nothing else than a succession of periods which are going to
engender some of the others, as a kind of wheel. But so that there is a creation
of the world, there has to have a sexual duality, that of Gaia, female, and
Ouranos, male. It will be the same for all which is engendered, that is animals,
vegetables, men and their works. Then you understand why Saint Beuve said
that the writing is delivery. Gaia has inevitably to make naitre something of her
even and thus the writing of Hésiode has to make born something of him.
But if the writing is delivery, it is because the woman was fertilized at first 9
months earlier. There has at first to have fertilization, and in the same way the
dance, I come now to the dance there, is delivery, after a fertilization which is
literally a creation. In fact the dancer engenders the dance by a rhythm which
he imposes on his body, while making only one with him, little as the painter
engenders the painting by the measure which he imposes on the hand. And
thus the chaos, the unique abyss at first, creates the World in its duality. I insist
on the notion of duality because all the thinkers since Aristote until Gide or
Heidegger whose word I am going to say in the passage, thought that any art
was based on the opposition of two principles, which are not inevitably male or
female as in the mythology of Hésiode, principle female, Gaïa, and principle
male, Ouranos. Thus the world which was engendered by the earth, or the Earth
which engendered its opposite, the World, the bottom which engendered the
top which overhangs it in a way.
Since Artistote, when we wonder what a work of work of art and Aristote asks
himself the question in a work which is called “La Phusik”, Your phusika - that
is literally “your phusika biblia”, the books of physical physics, you always find
this principal duality which constitutes the work of art, and thus the danced
work. We can see the meeting of a shape and a material there. So that there is
a work of art there has to have a material. For example so that there is a statue,
Michel - angel’s statue which we call Pieta, there has to have a material, the
marble of Paros, unless the sculptor has to prefer to sculpture in the wood as
the old statues, the “xoana”. We can see not only the opposition of a shape and
a material as had said to it to us Aristote, but also the opposition, as says it
Valery, a work of art is the result of an action, an action of the artist and something undefinable which is the material which it has or what it creates also ex
nihilo there. Same Valéry in a text which is called “Courts of poetics” speak
- 14 -
about a state and about an act. The state, it is the realized work and the act, it
is the act of realization that when it is exhausted, in the state of the work
withdraws. When you see the painting of Seurat “Sunday in the big bowl” and
when you go can be to see to the Theater of Chatelet in a month “To Sunday
afternoon in the park with George”, Stephen Sondheim’s musical where we see
how Seurat created this painting, you notice that he creates the painting from
an empty picture, that is of a painting blank or empty as said Mallarmé. And
nevertheless he is going to recreate “on Sundays in the big bowl” which is an
enormous picture which you have in the Art Institute of Chicago and which
Chicago, when there is big Seurat exhibition as in Paris in the Grand Palais,
refuses absolutely to release. It is a too important work.
Baudelaire always insisted in the duality of the beautiful as eternal and
invisible, connected to a relative and obvious element, in other words the
duality of the art for Baudelaire reproduces the duality of the man. There is
always this idea that the work of art is the conjunction of a duality or two units
which oppose. Then we can obviously sexuer in male and female, and say that
the work of art is engendered at the same time by the male part of an artist or
an artist and its female part, but the couple most generally used is the one of
the shape and the matter. It turns out that these two terms are feminine in
French, but do not pay attention on the feminine or male genre, in French or in
other languages. The shape is generally essential since Aristote in a active way
and if I dare to say male. It is her who sows in a way whereas the matter is
considered as feminine, as passive. It is her who receives the seed. Moreover it
is what means in French the word “material which comes to “matter” in Latin
which means the sea or the matrix. The materiality, it is what is the medium as
such.
We can again see there a new formula, and I end with Valéry, always in “the
Poetics”. We can see, as duality of the work, the opposition of the food there
which feeds the work of its embers, the fire which feeds the work of its embers
and the stimulant which relights ashes of its fire. For Valéry there always has to
have a food and a stimulant. And Paul Klee in painting, I end there above, do
not escape this dualism when he writes in the first lines of his crédo in 1920, the
crédo of the creator - you will find that in “The theory of the modern art”-, that
“any work of art nait of a visible which makes visible an invisible”. You know all
this formula: “the art does not reproduce the visible” - as a kind of
photocopy, “it makes visible”. But if it makes visible, it is that there is before him
an invisible. And the invisible is exactly the chaos, that is it nothing where from
something results.
Then we can wonder if the art, and I come now to the dance there, is the burst
of the spirit or the retreat of the matter ? Is what that is a liberation or an
eclipse? Is what that is a brilliance which comes from the sky or is what that is
a reclusion of the Earth ? It is there that I would want to take an example
relatively little known if you did not read Heidegger, who is in a remarkable text,
at the beginning of “Ausweg”, that is paths which lead nowhere - an ausweg in
German, it is the forest path which leads nowhere that in a clearing or returns
- 15 -
on him even. Thus the translator of “Ausweg” of Heidegger translated it by
“paths which lead nowhere”, where German, much more concise as Greek says
it only word: “Impasse”. The first text of “Ausweg”, paths which lead nowhere,
is called “the origin of the work of art” and Heidegger wonders what is the
hooked origin of a work of art whatever it is. He takes several canonical
examples: a Greek temple, a pair of farmer’s shoes painted by Van Gogh and
two or three other small examples. And when he tries to understand how the
work of art was born, Heidegger says that “that comes from the “choséité” of
the thing”. Any thing possesses a certain choséité as everything one possesses
a humanity, or any reality possesses a reality, and the choséité of the thing is a
kind of sluggish material at first, and thus as such chaotic, which is going to be
ordered by the power of the art. Heidegger does not go back up simply to the
matter which says itself in Greek “ Hulé “ or “Hylé” who mean etymologically the
wood, exactly as “Materia” in Latin which comes of Matter mean etymologically
the wood, where from the Spanish ïle of Madeira which is an island covered with
forests. We so call it because it is thus afforested the first material which was
handled by the man, in any case to Greek, it is the wood which is easier to
handle, even if it is wooden hard. In any case much easier to deal or to
sculpture, or to create for an architect. The first Greek temples were wooden
and there is nothing, naturally, because everything has brulé, but much easier
to handle than the marble or the stone. And said Heidegger : “When we
contemplate a standing Greek temple in the rocky valley which protects the
statue of the god” - a little as the Romanic and Gothic churches protect the
place where the priest celebrates the communion - “we notice that the work
opens a historic world”. The history of Greece begins with the rise of temples
or works of art simply. It is thus the art which opens the ways of the humanity.
Heidegger says “this is possible” - and use a hésiodique vocabulary and thus
poetic what surprised a lot people when Heidegger with fact this famous
conference in 1935 and 1936, “The origin of the work of art”. He says that: “the
work of art born always of a conjunction of the Earth that he writes it with a
capital letter, in the Sky. In other words, he resumes exactly the
“hésiodique” couple Earth - Gaïa / Sky - Ouranos. “A Greek templ’ says, but we
can say also a Romanic church or a modern supermarket, “is there
conjunction of the earth and the world as such’. I would now want to say to you
that it is the soul of the dance. The dance tries, except steps settled by the
choreography, to determine a shape from an initial space in a way. In other
words I do not believe that the dance tries to tidy up a chaos. She asks the
chaos, that is the initial space, to sketch an order as such. And all the tradition
of performing arts tries from the frontality of the look to invent other thing which
is the shaping of the chaos as such. Then I shall say simply to conclude that we
can suppose, that is that the cosmic order exists from time immemorial but then
how to understand that the world or continuous and always existed ? There is
no origin. It is an origin without origin. Or what the cosmic order deploys from
the nothingness and in this case you fall in a hypothesis of religious type. The
Wolrd comes from a creator as such and the question settles obviously for the
- 16 -
artists: really does a work can born ex-nihilo ?
Then I end simply on Michel Hallet because it is him who proposed if it is not
imposed this colloquium. This idea of a dance as a “Alive Composition”, I
believe effectively that the expression which he uses to appoint his shape of
choreography is an alive composition because any work of art is a lively
composition as far as el part of a space empty and not yet ordered according
to orientations, and it is going to determine an appearance, an appearance of
the dancer which is going to make only one with its dance, that there is or not
a theme, that there is or not a composition beforehand played during the
rehearsals. The dance world in fact is never closed on itself, it is always an
opening of “béance” type or of chaotic type, and it is in the sense that this
opening will never be closed on a close. That is why the Art is always an
opening towards a possible which never closes on him even.
- 17 -
“The practice of the fate, how the
fate can join the composition?”
par Robert Swinston,
Manager of the National Center of Contemporary dance of
Angers, member of the THAT of “Merce Cunningham Trust”.
The words and the categories in France and in the United States are different. In France we speak about “contemporary dance”, in the United States
we say “the dance of today”.
In the “dance of today”, all the categories are accepted or valid: the modern
dance, the contemporary dance, the ballet dance. Everything is viable, valid.
The work of Merce Cunningham and John Cage was inspired by Marcel
Duchamp’s work. Duchamp inspired a lot the American artists in the 50s:
Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Jasper Jones. All are
inspired by processes of Duchamp who consists in going out of his habits, the
gout of artists, of what he likes or does not like.
I read you John Cage’s text. “The music which I prefer, it is the one that have
not written yet. I do not write the music which I hear, I write the music which I
have not heard yet”. The logic of these ideas is to go out of the logic of the own
understanding of the artist. There is numerous manners to reveal this building.
For John Cage, it is important to build very numerous structures which makes
that every taken decision comes from the fate. He authorizes the fate to express
itself without personal judgment. As for Merce Cunningham who has to make
with the movement, who is a tangible thing, concretizes, in bodies, a fact, he
knows that there are things dictated by the fate which are impossible to make,
but for Merce Cunningham, the problem is to make it anyway by finding the
means to make them.
How did they proceed ?
First of all they leaned sir the “Yi King”. In the 50s, they were introduced to the
“Yi King” which had just been translated into America. “The book of the
changes” is an Oracle, it gives directions. Originally the “Yi King” was made for
Kings, and my servicemen. Traditionally the “Yi King” gets out with baguettes.
Today we use coins : 3 coins which we pull 6 times, what gives us
hexagrammes which give us indications of oracles. The way with which they
proceeded at the beginning of their approach is not clear. On the other hand the
- 18 -
appearance of the first computers is going to give to Cage the possibility of
creating numbers, count which for him represent a mystery with its
hexagrammes 64, count of the DNA, number of compartments in the chess.
Merce Cunningham builds 64 combinations of movements.
Example: combination 1 with an imbalance, etc., combination 64, etc. The
position of the dancer in the space is made in the same way, 64 positions in the
space. There is no point in the more important space the one than the other
one. Here is how he proceeded. However if all the decisions took themselves
with the fate, the process would would been extremely complicated and very
long.
The notes of Cunningham show a system of creation so. There is this dance
which is called “Gallop” which is a dance to make when that I have joint ne
company. This dance uses the movements of fingers, in the curve of the back,
etc. In this way he creates a list of the various possibilities of things which were
never created.
The problem of the artist is to know if he likes what it creates. This is not really
important for Cage and Cunningham. They work not to take into account what
he like or not. Everything is made by the fate; this is totally for Cage, not totally
for Cunningham. Merce did not reveal what he made, and his process was
secret. But maintaining that we have their notes, we see that their work
represents a considerable mass of notes to begin the play. The problem is to
know thus, when it is necessary to begin to realize the work. In fact that is not
their problem, what account it is: “let us begin ! Just start !”. It is the
recommendation of Cage. And when we begin, there is something. For Cage, it
is certain, he accepted all which happened. Sometimes he used the process by
means of all these complicated things, sometimes by using “ Finekes wake “.
He opened the book and said: “That’s it !”. The possibilities, the limits, the ideas
of these structures and a way of harmonizing these structures. The essential
idea is to conceive as the “Yi King”, as the answer to a question. l made have
a question, the “Yi King” answers a question. Is it a specific question, a
general question ? If the question is specific, the answer will be specific, if the
question is general, the answer will be general. But it’s always a question.
There is a lot of enjoyment in this process because it is necessary to engage its
responsibility to assume of what appears. For Duchamp, since the
Renaissance, nothing has sense), and this thought marks Cage a lot ? Thus so
it makes no sense, he can approach the silence as Merce can approach the
immobility. The space is thus included in the work, in the composition in which
each can interpret. What he sees, what he lives, without preestablished
program.
Merce always was playing games and noting the result of his games. Never he
revealed to the dancer what he noted, but the years respite he noted. We have
now all his notes and even with that it is difficult to find the sense. We have to
play the fate on these notes to find the idea or imagine the idea, but it is
- 19 -
necessary to specify that all this left nothing, it left that that all this sum of
information which he interpreted without revealing us to anything. When we
said to him : “you work the fate?”, left a roar of laughter.
Merce Cunnigham and John Cage separated the music and the dance because
the time is also a structure. The chronometer structures the time, then they
created dance and music separately, to collect them at the time of the show. It
was like that in 1980 when I have join the Company. We arrived on stage and
we discovered the music. We were often told that it was to be difficult but it was
not because we were used to dancing silently, and we were more worried
because we had to make, as well the simplest step or the biggest virtuosity.
The work of the dancer consists in feeling the movement and in embodying it
without telling a story. It is necessary to have courage to find new dances
because the accident, the change, always arrive on stage. It is what makes the
interest. Many poets so work.
I show you now an example of drawing lots (Rober Swinston realizes an “Yi
King” in front of the assembly). You see, I use this “Yi King”, it is the one that I
bought when I was student. I used it in every opportunity, even at the moment
i had to choose to become a dancer. Today I still use the fate for my work,
because when we worked more than 20 years with Merce Cunningham, it is
difficult to leave the shade of the big artist. Before the death of Merce,
particularly during the last 2 working years during which he did not tour with us,
I consulted a lot him, but after the death, I ended up alone. Sometimes I use the
fate, sometimes I estimate what is preferable. I set a lot of time to deliberate,
for example for the last performance of the company where 14 dancers were
distributed on 3 different stages. It was a puzzle to organize it, and I did not
really use the fate, I used my own judgment.
Question of the public : After all these working years with the fate, how you
do feel today to use your appropriate judgment ?
Robert Swinston : I am not Merce Cunningham, I am not John Cage, I work as
far as possible to be clearly in my work. I do not want to substitute myself for
them. Their process is a very long process. I was student of Martha Graham; I
was thus entrainé to dance a dance which says stories. So I danced the beautiful dances of José Limon. The work with Cunningham was a liberation which
allowed me to have my own imagination. For Merce Cunningham this
unpredictable work is close to the nature, as the time which changes. The body
by itself is meaning, it does not need another sense. When in the 70s he works
at “The Comet” with the piece “TV RERUN”, he conceives the dance for the
look of the camera.
Question of the public : Can we dance other thing than Merce Cunningham
dance after Merce Cunningham ?
- 20 -
Robert Swinston : The complexity of the movements motivates us. Example,
to make the movement 1, then 2, then 1 and 2, then 3. When we arrive at 32 we
forgot the beginning, and the work of the dancer is there.
Question of the public : You say that the dancers make that said Merce
Cunnigham, they are thus of the “cattle” for Merce Cunningham as Hitchcock
said that “the actors are of the cattle”.
Robert Swinston : No because the dancer also in his choices, the detection,
the order of the movements, no more Merce never said that we hurt. He left us
the responsibility.
Question of the public : It works for everything but for the “harmonies”.
Robert Swinston : Merce was not a repeater. The dancers have to assemble
their energy. When I entered the company, each danced for him, there was a
competition between the dancers. During the last years, one day, I asked
Merce: “ do you pour that it is together danced? “ And he answered “ oh, that
would be good! “. In the last years in were more in sympathy, more in accord.
Merce rewrote the dances in the computer, came to the studio and never he
said to us the process. He arrived with his papers and we repeated. At the end
of his life, for example last year, at the age of 89, he did not have time any more
to work on the computer which is very very time-consuming, then he came with
his small papers and it was a mystery for me to see him making so dances of
90 minutes. It is a genius for me, as “ Einstein of the dance “.
Question of the public : Merce asked questions for the “ Yi King “. Have you
track these questions?
Robert Swinston : The questions are simple. What happend if there are 6
dancers? What happend if there are 4? The question is simple.
Question of the public : How does he choose the title of his pieces ?
Robert Swinston : if he found in the computer with Windows, he called it
“Windows” or “Software”, etc. He liked the titles which had various senses,
enigmatic. He was interested in what he did not know. He loved the new
dancers, the new inspirations, the new ideas.
- 21 -
“Choreographic Composition”
by Myriam Gourfink
Choreographer, person in charge of the training
program of the Abbey of Royaumont.
Stakes in the work
•
•
•
Weight - Revolved
Breath - work of the various diaphragms - atmospheric pressure
Frequencies - Echo
© Frédérique Fichet - Waw
- 22 -
Our strengths of anchoring and implanting, the manners the Earth attraction of
which we use are for the dance of the stakes in ceaseless explorations, giving
birth to journeys danced by a big diversity. It is the work of Odile Duboc that for
my part directed my report(relationship) in the gravity. I feel him as a time of
vertical descent of the weight under the earth’s crust, then one time of listening
of what goes back up of the ground through the body : It is as the wave which
widens our internal spaces and which impulses the movement.
To come to visit more in detail the spaces of the body, I began in 1995 an
exploration from the breath, the yoga helped me to discern the sensation of a
physical breath and that of a tenuous breath on the thread of the breath, it is on
the latter that rests the work which I develop since. This work gives to feel the
body as a resonant volume, the perception is not only snatched by the internal
space but just as much by the surrounding space, the body is porous it is in the
air.
A new stake it is then presented that to take into account by dancing the
atmospheric pressure, to experiment this strength, be allowed carry by the air
and give to see this support. The desire to be the witness of the meeting
between every cell and every molecule of air was imperative. These very small
spaces are measured by the perception and this gives birth to a dance the time
of which stretches, some people will speak about slowness. I would say that it
is “an other time”, that allows to feel the atmosphere, to come to discern by the
perception the frequencies, what resounds.
•
Understand the laws of nature
which govern the movement.
•
Research for a system of writing
based on the laws of nature
which govern the movement.
•
To compose a dance which feeds
on the appropriate intelligence
in the thought of the dance.
- 23 -
© Frédérique Fichet - Waw
« The dance it is not of the movement, it is this partition, this immaterial
footbridge between choreographer and interpreter. »
1/ The composition and the musical computing, the notation Laban, influence
my creative process a lot. How have these disciplines a dialogue with my
choreographic work ?
The music, developed a metalanguage which creates a distance between the
musical composition and the production of the sound. She can think except the
result (broadcast of sound), and this seems to be a big source of invention,
because there is music dice then that he thought of it musical, thus upstream
to the production of sounds.
By looking for a similar functioning adapted to the thought of the dance, I was
interested in the Notation Laban.
- 24 -
In the learner, it seemed to me obvious that by resorting to the computing tools,
it would be possible to use this language (very structured), for the
choreographic composition and for the writing “a priori” of a choreography.
I then began, a search to develop from Labanotation my own language.
The formalization of this writing for the composition was widely influenced by
my meeting with the engineer in computing and the ethnomusicologist Frédéric
Voisin and my collaboration with the composer Kasper T. Toeplitz…
© Frédérique Fichet
- 25 -
Glossolalia (09-99)
It wa not question of producing supernatiural movements, but juts of giving
matter to the elaboration of a very personal language, that of Jérôme. Throw
nothing, no aesthetics choose, favor the structure.
Alone, in front of three days of pages of notes, I resorted, to support my
reflection, to the technologies to make for example random editions or
recursive reasonings.
Simply, I tried to define the parameters which for me could be at the origin of a
dance.
forms (f)
breath (b)
orientation of the body in the space (o)
direction of the thoughts inside the body (i)
direction of the thoughts outside the body (e)
looks ( r ) .................
Then, finding it’s a pity to favor in the choreographic composition the shape, the
orientation, and curious to know what could generate more secret or less
visible parameters of the order of the breath, the thoughts, the looks, I decided,
to structure the dance, to calculate a number of combinations (defining
moments) chosen randomly among the possible combinations of 6 parameters
(f,b,o,i,e,r), by knowing that every edition can be a combination from 1 to 6 of
these elements, that a combination cannot be pulled more than once, and that
we have to calculate at the same time the value (found in workshop) of every
parameter according to a random function. To go up to the end of the idea I also
chose randomly the order of the possible combinations.
Nevertheless, this did not exempt me of making a final choice, these
calculations were only a tool of reflection. I deciphered (with the consciousness
that this must be danced) a large number of editions, and I did not hesitate to
recompose some parts.
- 25 -
- 26 -
What seems to me, today, to be the key point of the experimentled with the
software, it is that by opening the system of evaluation, we could not any more
(Laurence Marthouret, the notatrice associated with the project, and myself)
translate it Laban the paintings of “LOL”.
I subjected certain choreographic problems to my professor Jacqueline
Challet-Haas: how to note in Laban, a room conceived with “LOL”, such as
“Marine” (a solo created to the Festival of The Built in Geneva in September,
2001, for the dancer Cindy Van Acker), where the basic space is a sphere
divided into seven?
Jacqueline’s answer was immediate: “ it is impossible “. She then encouraged
me to formalize a personal writing.
.
- 27 -
Lexicon
The invented “language” inherits from Cinétographie Laban ( Labanotation). It
makes possible a division of l ? Space according to the personal choices of the
choreographer, and it is according to this cutting that the signs modulate and
are transformed in the infinity.
The basic principle is a ball crossed by an axis: the ball can be divided in a
regular or irregular way, for reasons bound to the physical reality, the axis
corresponds to the gravity.
However in certain cases - extraterrestrial experiments in weightlessness or
Economy of writing the axis can follow the slope of the body, the referent is then
the axis from head to foot (see chapter on the physical key of axis).
- 28 -
•
The direction - horizontal plan
So a first family of signs indicates the movements made by the dancer on a
horizontal plan. In the example which follows the horizontal space is divided
into five in a regular way. The darkened stalk corresponds to the direction that
dancer has to set.
These signs can divide into 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 22 etc. according to the necessities
Choreographics.
- 29 -
•
Angular movement on an horizontal plan
By the use of arrows and figures the choreographer can suggest to the dancer
operating a change of direction without knowing his starting position : the
dancer moves one or several parts of the body indicated on the horizontal plan
of the number of wanted angles of bases.
The following examples were written for the partition “Contraindre” :
- 30 -
•
The level - vertical plan
Another family of signs informs about the movements made by the dancer on
the vertical plan (the level). In the following examples the vertical space is
divided into five, the darkened stalk corresponds to the wanted level.
- 31 -
•
The operators of movement
The operators of movement specify the way of going towards: by winding, by
making a rotation, a flexion, a translation etc... They can be estimated with the
signs of direction and level which can undergo small adjustments, or with the
signs of amplitude of movement. They are placed over the signs of direction /
level, the signs of parts of the body are next size down.
- 32 -
- 33 -
© Rémy Muller
- 34 -
© Rémy Muller
- 35 -
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- 40 -
Etienne Ghys’s intervention
a round its movies
Member of the Academy of Science,
study leader in mathematics (CNRS - ENS Lyon)
“Chaos”
The movie Chaos, a mathematical adventure, realized by Jos Leys, Etienne
Ghys and Aurélien Alvarez, announced for months, finally went out. This new
mathematical movie, after Size, the same authors, is constituted by nine
chapters of thirteen minutes each. Intended for every public, it treats dynamic
systems, butterfly effect and theory of the chaos.
http://www.animath.fr/spip.php?article473
“Dimensions” ...a mathematic walk...
A movie for every public. Nine chapters, two hours of math, to discover
gradually the fourth dimension. Guaranteed mathematical dizzinesses.
http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_fr.htm
and chapters 5 et 6 about the complex numbers`
http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_CH5.htm
- 41 -
“How the Benesh partition reveals the
composition and testifies of the improvisation”
by Eliane Mirzabekiantz
In charge of the training in the notation of
the movement Benesh to the Higher National
Conservatory for Music and of Dance of Paris.
I am particularly happy to share with you a tool which opened me
numerous doors and which brought me to many reflections.
“How the notation Benesh reveals the composition and testifies of the
improvisation”. Improvisation in the sense of the process of composition which
characterizes the sphere of influence of modern dance comment American and
more particularly the structured improvisations. I shall lean on 2 partitions of
Benesh, because effectively I practise it for more than 20 years, at first as
notatrice with Robert North. I noted his ballets while he created them. I
contributed to the rehearsals and I was also brought to raise his pieces for other
companies. At present, and for 15 years, I am teaching to the Academy of Paris
and the works, the questioning, problems raised by the students were an invaluable enrichment.
The systems of notation of the movement are fundamentally tools of analysis,
the parameters of analysis and the look which we concern the movement vary
from a system to the other one according to the objectives and concepts held
by his inventor.
The Benesh system is published in London in 1955 under the name of “Benesh
movement notation” and 3 years later the British government presents it to the
World Fair of Brussels among the major discoveries of the science and the
technology.
His inventor Rudolf Benesh is a mathematician by training. He studies the
music and the painting. It is his wife Joan Rothwell, a dancer in Sadlers’ Wells
Theatre, current Royal Ballet of London that is going to be the element catalyst.
Indeed, while he paints his portrait, to help her to spend time, he suggests to
her to try to note with the words and to scrawl exercise books to try to
memorize her choreographies, her courts. And he say to himself that at time
when musician, when it is not possible that an art so visual as the dance has
not its own writing.
It was the mainspring. Its wish, its objective, was at first to give a memory for
the dance, to create a system of memorization for the dancers who practise the
movement. Then that this tool can allow to communicate what we saw the
- 42 -
others. Then finally to give this tool to every person who wishes to study the
composition and who he can have a look on the choreographers of past. Here
are essentially his objectives.
Rudolf Benesh perceives at once the necessity of being able to apply it to any
shape of human movement and his application in the dance constitutes clearly
only a part of the stake. The system will be jointly used in the field of the
ergonomics, of the medicine and of the anthropology of the dance. Then which
look it concerns the movement? Rudolf Benesh is going to bend over the
chronophotography of Etienne-Jules Marey, one of the pioneers of the
photography, the beginning of the cinema. The chronophotography allows to
analyze the movement by successive pictures.
Of this chronophotography, he goes and looks at the movements by trying to
get moments keys, the “keyframe” in English, what returns exactly to the same
principles as for the assembly to the cinema.
For all the intermediate passages, he is going to draw all the intermediate
moments. And there you have the concept of the movement. We look at the
movement, we look for moments and we go and look how we pass of the
starting point in the place of destination. That it is for the transcription. When
we are going to read, we are going to read “ how I go from one to another” and
pass by all these points. Then the concept of the movement so established,
Benesh is going to stand out 3 priority criteria :
•
•
•
Simplicity
Precision
Efficiency
To arrive there he looks for the mode representation of the most thrifty body. He
is thus going to to appeal to Léonardo da Vinci and so we have our 5 lines.
These 5 lines are already going to give us a direction of the reading, from left to
right, but also a scale of height which is going to allow us of reduced this body
to its minimum. He is going to melt this physical image not to keep more than
the extremities in this case.
We thus have a reach. Let us interest maintaining us with the rhythm the sign of
which takes place over the reach. By adding to the pictogram, represented
body, this sign then by moving it, we change the rhythm. Then besides the sign
give rhythm, we are going to add the duration, then the situation in the space.
Here is in a way simplified how we manage to note the movement. It gives us
in fact this:
•
•
•
We have time above the impact
We have the movements of the body on the impact
We have the lines of spaces below the impact
- 43 -
And with regard to compared with it, we have very different keys for reading. We
can content for example with seeing the rhythmic. We can also content with
seeing the space and very often, when we begin with the space, we already
know where we are. It is as the story which begins. The signs are going to
identify moments in time, situations in the space, …
And it is going to work naturally with several dancers by adding it the relation
of each of the identified dancers (a first name, a name, a number) in the space
and in connection with the others. The partition such as it is so defined gives a
faithful vision of what takes place on stage.
In the line of time, we can also add the line of instruments (guitars, voices),
every dancer always having his appropriate indications.
As the partition complicates, in most of the cases, it’s better to entrust it to
somebody else to see what he makes, how he translated it. It was made a lot
on these principles with Bagouet, Prejlocaj, …
Here is for the composition. We are going to intersest us in the aspect
improvisation with the partition “dancers’ Portraits” of Andy de Groat. Andy de
Groat is a dancer and a choreographer, born in the United States in 1947 and
established in France since 1980. He studies the fine arts (School of Fine Arts)
before discovering the dance in 20 years. Diligent spectator of Cunningham and
Yvonne Rainer, he collaborates with Robert Wilson for the choreography of
“Einstein one the beach”, an opera of 5 hours without argument on musics of
Philip Glass.
“Dancers’ portraits” was created in New York in 1979 by his own company. It is
a piece on the preludes for piano of Chopin extracted from the Opus 28 and the
preludes 25 and 26. The piece was resumed by Andy de Groat for the Group of
Choreographic Research for the Opera of Paris in 1985, on a partition of Noémie
Perlov within the framework of a command of the Opera of Paris. And all its
information which I have just said to you is in the partition because a partition
is not only the movements, it is also an introduction to explain the piece and
this peculiarity, from the front page, Noémie puts forward her resuming the
words of Andy de Groat so : “this ballet does not put on stage imaginary
characters or fiction but the real personality of the dancer. It investigates in
detail the following problem : how to make diverse persons dance of a way
which is fixed and free at the same time”.
This question and the answers which we can bring it are for me essential. They
are can be even on the basis of my work. When we see the piece, we do not
suspect that he can have there there of the improvisation, really. Thanks to the
partition we are going to be able to discover the various approaches
(choreographed moments, improvisations). Noémie begins by giving notes of
- 44 -
style : “the ballet makes reference to the academic dance, which has its codes,
its movements, its names of step …”
She adds it an important note which addresses more the repeater or the one
who is going to resume the partition : “Every time there will be a necessity for
the dancer to improvise, it will be made in this academic context”. Thus there
is a frame, even recommendations intended for the dancers. There are general
notes which are going to define the frame of every improvisation, but it’s better
to give only it to the dancers who are going to resume the piece but do not
know it, so that they can themselves go back by the improvisation.
The first partition which corresponds to the 1st prelude is rather empty, with a
single “sentence” which is going to be taken by “cannon” entrances notified in
the time. The dancers are however free to choose the position of arms for
“grands jetés” among 4 proposals.
Other prelude. The partition speaks about two girls who are going to have to
evolve in a “proverb” and in this partition one find the word “Impro” which is
every time explained.
The prelude N°9 is more complex. It is about 9 postures which we are going to
teach to the dancers and the variations for these positions can include several
choices :
•
•
•
“on the other side”,
“turning”,
“crossing”,
etc.
The dancers have to use all the space in all the directions.
In the last part, 5 couples, Sir, Madam which face each other are going to
browse the space by convolution. When the woman moves forward, the man
moves back and vice versa. There is a partition for the woman, and a partition
for the man. It is a course. And when we look at the partition by standing back,
we begin to see in the movements proposed by letters, then words or names
(for example that of one of the dancers).
I am now going to speak to you about another very particular work of Kathleen
Fisher which goes back up a piece of Trisha Brown entitled “ Set and reset “ for
the Junior Ballet of the Upper National Academy Music and Dance of Paris.
Happens that Fabien Monrose, who is in 2nd year, was to make the taken place
year a training course to the Trisha Brown Academy and when he knew that
there was a perspective of this work, he called the Foundation to ask for the
permission to note. He thus followed all the rehearsals and thanks to it we can
- 45 -
better highlight this process of structured improvisation which Trisha Brown
used a lot in its works. “Set and reset” was created in 1983 on musics of Laurie
Anderson and it is a current work.
From a compulsory, choreographed, taught sentence, every dancer evolves
solo to deconstruct and manipulate this sentence but always under the control
of the coach. Then they evolved in duet, and there the dancer had to react to
the action of the other dancer. Always in this sentence, the dancers are also
choreographers of their own partition and it gives rules (“be on the alert”, “that
we see and that we do not see”, “to look and to act with instinct”, “remain
simple”).
When we are in studio and when we note as the dancers evolve and create, we
do not think, we do not reflect, all that we have it is a pencil and we put signs,
as we can. We note a maximum of information. I asked one day to Fabien to
come to teach a sentence to his companions who noted from their part what
they felt. These round trips between Fabien’s notes and those of his
companions really enlightened it on what was really important to make feel in
the partition. It is really from there that we can think about what we are really
going to note: “ what is what I content myself with sentences ? The warm-up ?
The resultant with regard to what these young dancers make ?”. That is why I
call it a partition in the course of reflection.
To conclude, what seems to me really important, for what I tried to show you in
this frame, it is our concerns as notateur to reflect what takes place in the
studio: how the choreographer works, how intervene the dancers. It is to think
by the presentation of the partition how to communicate it. If the paper is
correctly made has to give keys so that the symbolized movement resumes life
in the spirit breathed during its creation.
- 46 -
Intervention de Pablo Jensen
Directeur de Recherches CNRS
au laboratoire de physique de l’ENS de Lyon.
Physics : order and transformations
- 47 -
Physics and mathematical order :
Galilée and the movement
Law of fall
Mathematics, perfect knowledge
“People know how to plant a vine
shoot, but God knows how to grow
roots, draw the food, pull it and
distinguish
elements
from
it
appropriate form sheets, spins,
clusters, grains and pips.
But as regards the geometrical
proposals, the human understanding
includes some so perfectly and has a
certainty of it of it so absolute as God
he even.”
Galilee, adapted of the
“Dialogues of the big systems”
(Florence, 1632
- 48 -
Explain, for a physicist
To explain, it is to transform a physical
fact into a mathematical problem, then
•
to solve it by using the
mathematical tools.
•
Galilee applies it to the
movement of bodies :
- Clock(Pendulum)
- Trajectories (parabola)
- Distance - time
•
Transformation by
idealized image, to keep only
mathematical sizes
Manuscript of Galilee, around 1600
Mathematizing
the movement
- 49 -
Invention of Galilee :
The laboratory
W
O
R
L
D
Movements
(balls, but also birds !)
Clock, cannon ?
Limits
Estrangement to common knowledge
Simplifications
(frictions, ...)
L
A
B
O
Applications
• Possible calculations
• Relevant mathematics
• Explanation !?
Gravity contribution
- 50 -
Mathematizing the universe
Newton : universal gravitation
(around 1680)
• Precise observations of Tycho Brahé
• Mathematical sizes
- Planet : (m, r)
- Strength = G’ mm/r2
- Movement - Forces
• Allows to calculate trajectories of
planets
• Disagreement ? Prediction of
unknowm planet
Veermer, the astronomer
Mathematizing the matter
Newton : matter made by solid particles / force
(“active ingredients” : gravity, fermentation, cohesion)
•
Program of the physics of the material :
to find
- stable particles more or less geometrical
- force ( mathematical expression)
•
To Calculate the matter ! To predict ?
•
Impossible before purification thanks to
industrialization, the 20th beginning,
artificial matter
- 51 -
Difficult to explain with atoms
at the time of Newton
“Atoms of the Cartesians” around 1700
To progress, it is necessary to know the characteristics of atom :
size, strenghts, positions
Industrialization
Exploration of the matter
•
Metal Industry, electricity,
cold
•
Better control, knowledge of
the matter
Metal industry (Eiffel Tower, 1889
•
Microscopic level
Electric bulb in carbon, 1882
•
Quantum mechanics
- 52 -
Triumphs of the atomic theory ?
Not so simple !
•
•
•
Atoms so small, that number astronomical and not easy to
do calculations ( various solar system)
As soon as we take out books of court, many very complex
structures (living, real matter): it will be necessary to order
them !
Atoms are not hard balls : internal structure, very complex
strengths.
The atomic level is not still the most relevant
to understand
Understanding thanks to atoms
Small atoms...
- 53 -
Atomic view of the distortion of a crystal
Small atoms...
A physical of the matter
possible ?
Physical of the matter is a
“dirt disgusting”, and “good
physicists should no wallow
in it grime”
- 54 -
Transforming the matter
in the laboratories
•
Too impure matter !
Metal industry :
Empirical then
(partially) physical
•
Semiconductors :
Theoretical materials
from the beginning
•
Cleanse to understand :
The example of metals
- 55 -
The electronics triumphs
over the physics
•
•
•
First transistor (Bell, on 1948)
•
Semi drivers at first, theoretical
prediction (1931) of the quatum
mechanics
Researchers of the Bell
calculate amplis, but the real
devices fail !
Very big purification
prerequisite in quite use
High Cost of Investments
Standardizing to dominate
the fordiste agriculture
W
O
R
L
D
• Local seeds
• Specific knowledge
• Genotype systemenvironment-practice-use
•
•
•
•
Selection,
Decontectualisation
L
A
B
O
High efficiencies
Fertilizez, plowing
Genetic poverty
Loss country
Applications
Standardcalculations
environment
• Possible
Pure lineages
• Relevant
mathematics
Improvement!?(criteria)
• Explanation
• Selection
- 56 -
Atoms and transformations
Is there anything which
is not transformed ?
Google ?
Dieu !
How to think
of the transformations?
•
Greeks : thought of the being, the substance, the deep nature.
“What a man, if he is lacking substance?
If it is only a look and not a being?”
(Saint-Exupéry, Fighter pilot, on 1942)
•
How to think of the transformation from unchanging essences ?
•
How the snow (in essence, cold) bottom to become some water (in
essence, warm)? When the snow is not more snow and becomes
water ?
•
Kant : substance = what persists during the change and makes it
understandable
•
Generic water, either settle(liquidate) or solid?
- 57 -
Atoms :
Approach of the matter transformations
•
Snow and water: atoms as substance, unchanged substratum
during the change.
•
Only their configuration varies during the fusion.
•
Atoms = intrinsic characteristics remain unchanged and allow
to base an explanation
•
Transformation reduced to change of configuration
•
“Anything not created, nothing gets lost, everything is
transformed” (superficially?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?Feature=player_detailpage*list=PL66AB1A01
A5FF7B7C*v=gmjLXrMaFTg
Atomic explanations
•
Explain = return to more stable, more general phenomena
(atoms, genes, social class)
•
In physics, attribute essence to entities (planet : Mass) then
transformations as consequence of essences thanks to the
dynamic laws (Newton)
•
Success vision atoms / configurations : can we be inspired by
it to understand the transformations of the alive bodies or the
social reality?
- 58 -
Micro - macro
Sociology :
You should not imagine that every individual is originally endowed with
his own power, that he would put then in the service of common
institutions.
On the contrary, it is of the common power that every individual pulls
his individual power - it is thanks to the language necessarily common
that we can reflect.
(Y Citton, Mythocraties, éd. Amsterdam, on 2010)
Micro - macro
•
Atomism : ultimate reality made by entities possessing qualities
independent from their relation in the other entities.
Fruitful approximation for the matter.
•
Organicisme : the essential characteristics of the entities are
the result of their relations with other entities. How to model
then ?
•
Leave complex individuals who simplify themselves by
connecting ? : “The whole is smaller than its parts”,
collaboration with médialab, Bruno Latour (Faculty of political
science, Paris)
- 59 -
Border between physics and SHS
Physics towards social sciences :
•
•
Simple models ? Conceptually OK, but link with reality ?
Modelling of real data.
Avalanche of social data:
•
•
•
48 hours of videos per minute in YouTube.
Google and Facebook million tracks per second
Hundreds of million comments added to the blogosphere a day
Atoms and social transformations
•
•
•
•
•
Configurations of which “social atoms” ?
Methodological individualism ?
Human beings = “beings the being of which is not to be”
(Beauvoir)
Avalanche of social data : physicists, IT specialists,
sociologists develop formal tools to understand.
For the moment, numerous tools to understand the structure
of big networks
- 60 -
Chemistry laboratory :
Structure in three teams guessed
thanks to automatic analysis of its articles
Structure of the research in France
(~ 320 000 articles published on 2007 - 2010)
- 61 -
- 62 -
Maturity
Atoms and social transformations
Social atoms ? Problem so political
•
•
Laws of nature for atoms relevant for simplified matter,
artificial, built in laboratory.
Laws of the social atoms: model of the economic laws,
constructed environment, saved society (monetarization)
- 63 -
Other approach
of the transformations ?
•
•
Difficult to think of the transformations with substances.
Pragmatism, process (James, Whitehead) :
The idea of stubborn substance supporting persistent
qualities represents an often useful but at the bottom
erroneous abstraction
The world is not given, it is “being made”, events
which exceed the “causes” : but how explain islands
of stability?
“There is always enough available past to feed with
reasons all the future in sight. The world is also
continuous for the believers in the determinism as for
the partisans of the free referee, except that those
cannot believe in points of fork which divert the
actions” - W James
Other approach
of the transformations ?
•
François Jullien, chineese approach which does not leave
from the essences, but from the change
The chineese thought , in the way it gets up towards the world
and of ties a first agreement there, does not ask itself the
question of “what is it?” but give the priority at the rythm of
the seasons, approach the life by the breath which renews it
“The silent transformations”
- 64 -
Order / chaos ?
“Disorder” indicated at first in French
(at about the year 1200) a negligence to
the monastic rules imposed by the
religious “orders”.
Today, physics freed (partially) from this
obsession, muddled materials,
Nobel Price of Gennes on 1986
DLA + ants : animation NetLogo
Order / chaos ?
To understand complex systems functional as order
and not as the chaos asks for the work, for the
understanding.
The sheets which fall trees to autumn, inside of an
engine of plane, the entrails of a rabbit, all appear as of
the chaos if they are seen without understanding.
When we understand the system of order, they are
differently seen.
Jane Jacobs,
American cities
- 65 -
- 66 -
“Neuronales bases
of the nonverbal communication”
by Mathilde Menoret,
PhD student in Neurosciences and Cognitive Sciences
Introduction
•
•
The man interacts in a continuous way with his environment and more
Particularly with his congeners.
Particular Interest for the non-verbal social interactions.
Synchrony
Imitation
Social interactions
Joint action
- 67 -
•
-
Traditionally, these questions were studied in tasks of passive
observations :
Revealing of involved intellectual areas
Recognition of biological movements
Identification of faces
Identification of the feelings, etc. …
Theory of the spirit
Decision-making
Feelings / Fear
Detection of the
biological movements
•
Detection
of faces
Recently, the evolution of techniques allowed to study social
interactions in more ecological contexts.
What are mechanisms involved in the recognition and the
execution of social acts ?
- 68 -
•
What are the effects of the interaction with another individual on the
intellectual activity ?
Adapté de Hari & Kujala, 2009
Both individuals build together a common meaning of the gesture.
Discovery of “mirror neurons”
- 69 -
The mirror neurones
Discovery of mirror neurons
during studies of the monkey
predriving cortex :
-
Unitarian Recordings
of neurons
Area F5
Mirror neurons initially identified
to the sign in predriving area F5
activated at the same time during
the execution of a movement and
the observation of the same
movement.
Di Pellegrino et al., 1992
- 70 -
The man mirror neurons
Indirect identification :
Buccino et al. (2004)
Observation
of a guitar
chord
Observation
of a chord
Adapté de Buccino et al. (2004)
Direct identification
Mukamel et al.(2010).
Mukamel et al.(2010).
What is the functional role of the mirror system ?
Basis of the imitation
Meltzoff & Moore (1977)
- 71 -
•
The understanding of the action (of others) :
If the observation is purely visual (without implication of the driving system) :
inform only about visual parameters without driving experiment/
The activation of the mirror circuit is essential to give to the observer a real
understanding by experience of the action which he sees.
•
The dance example
- Expert dancers in ballet dance or
capoeira
- Activity of the mirror system
modulated according to the
speciality
Calvo-Merino et al., 2005
Ballet
capoeira
-
In the same way, for the professional pianists, the listening of melodies
lead a different activation that for non-musicians : engine representation
-
Importance of the experiment on the mirror activity.
-
Integration of the actions of others is made through an individual driving
directory based on its own experience.
- 72 -
Implications for simultaneous actions
• What’s happen when we observe
an action while we execute an action
?
• What’s happen if the actions are
similar or different ?
Kilner et al. 2003, Ménoret et al. in revision
• At the level of the movements
kinematics ?
Optotrak
• At the level of the intellectual
activity ?
Electroencéphalographie (EEG)
At the level of the movements kinematics ?
Optimization of the movement
- 73 -
At the level of the intellectual activity ?
Driving potential synchronized over the beginning of the movement of the Actor
Instruction
Début du
mouvement
de l’acteur
Début du
mouvement
de l’observateur
1er pic de
vitesse (obs)
•
General facilitation of the movement when we observe an action/
•
Specific facilitation of the movement if observation of a “congruent”
movement :
Visible Effect
- on the kinematics of the movement
- on the intellectual activity
•
optimal Facilitation if co-activation
- 74 -
Implication for the dance...
•
We showed that to make an action during the observation of action can
facilitate the movement.
•
Property important for the dancers.
•
We can imagine that the activation of the system mirror by the
observation other dancers can facilitate the synchrony between
dancers but also to facilitate the realization of the danced movements.
•
Particularly when the movements are in the same rhythm.
- 75 -
Implications for the social interactions
Mirror neurons and social context :
•
•
Observation of action with or without context modifies the
mirror neurons activity.
But also the type of made action.
Iacoboni et al., 2005
Study of the neuronal correlates of the non-verbal social interactions :
Study in Dual-EEG
Protocol
• Observation :
-
Actor executes an action
Observer makes nothing
• Communication :
Obs1
Com
Actor executes the same action
Observer makes a
complementary action
Obs2
Ménoret et al., soumis
- 76 -
Protocol
•
Recording in Double-EEG simultaneously at
the actor and the observer ( 32 electrodes).
•
kinematic Analysis of the movements of
subjects recorded with Optotrak.
Synchronization of the signals EEG on acts
driving of the participants: at the Beginning of
movement of the actor or the observer mainly.
Kinematic results
No difference between the movements of the actor in the conditions
Communication and Observation
- 77 -
EEG results :
Actor
InteractionH - ObservationH contrast
ObservationH
InteractionH
Observator
ObservationH
InteractionH
InteractionH - ObservationH contrast
Mirros neurones and social interactions
•
•
There is well a modulation of the system of neurons mirror (and driving
system) by the social interactions.
This modulation seems to have a role in the representation of actions of
others within a global representation (including the initial action and the
answer)
Adapté de Hari & Kujala, 2009
- 78 -
Implication for the dance...
We can imagine an implication in these observations for the dances group :
•
When a dancer observes a step made by his partner, he has to make a
complementary step and needs to understand which action is expected
•
The activity of neurons mirror seems to allow to recognize and to plan
this action thanks to a representation of the whole action.
- 79 -
Beyond the driving system : intellectual synchronization
Study of the links between participants of an interaction :
Synchrony, imitation, interaction
•
•
Analysis of the synchronization of the signals EEG
Analysis of the coherence of the signals
Synchronous movements :
Lindenberger et al., 2010
- 80 -
Synchronous imitation
Dumas et al., 2010
Synchronization of the intellectual activities
between both participants during a
sequence of imitation.
(Locking Value Phase)
Dilemma of the prisoner: cooperation or treason
DeVico Fallani et al., 2010
•
•
2 « prisoners »
2 possible choices : cooperate or betray his partner
Prisoner B cooperates
Prisoner A betrays
Prisoner A
cooperates
1 year of
prison each
Prisoner A : 3 years
Prisoner B : free
Prisoner A
betrays
Prisoner A : free
Prisoner B : 3 years
2 years of
prison each
- 81 -
Measure of the coherences between the signals of the participants which
cooperate or betray themselves
Cooperation
Treason
There is more coherence when the participants cooperate rather than betray.
- 82 -
Conclusions
•
There are links which build up themselves between the participants of
an interaction, which it is about "simple" synchrony, about imitation and
about actions more give a complex such as the cooperation.
•
These links can be interesting to study to understand the putting
ready of action synchronized (in dance for example) but also to
understand the links set up during social interactions.
General conclusion
•
•
•
•
Important role of mirror neurons mirror in the representation of the
actions of others.
Implication for the simultaneous actions : to act in synchrony can
facilitate the action.
Implication of neurons mirror in the social interactions (coupled with
other mechanisms).
Development of new techniques to study the interactions in real
conditions :
- Perspectives for numerous domains.
Conclusion
Mirro neurons & Danse :
•
•
•
Activation of mirror neurons seems to allow to facilitate movement
synchronized, but also seems to have a role in it understanding of the
movements of others.
We can imagine that if the dance leads specific activations of
mirror neurons she can allow possibly to stimulate them.
Stimulate the SNM was proposed as therapeutics of diverse conditions
bound to the ageing as to the development.
- 83 -
Round Table with
Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet,
Master of education and research at the Faculty
of social and political Science of Lausanne,
Philippe Verrièle,
Critic and art historian,
Michel Hallet Eghayan,
Choreographer,
Jean-François Mattéi,
Philosopher.
- 84 -
Jean-François Le Maréchal :
We have now 1:30 am of debates during which the participants, if they wish can
complete their presentations and during which each can call out to them.
There was at the moment a debate on the neurosciences, this morning an other
one discusses on neurosciences and notation. And full of interesting lived
questions suspends it, deserving to be again put. Who wants to begin among
the participants ?
Philippe Verrièle :
Credit where credit’s due … Michel
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
I just want to say this. When yesterday I greeted you all, all of them, I said that
we live an important moment of civilization, moment which sees the system of
representation of one and the system of representation evolving in a extremely
fast way, moment when the consciousness which we have of the universe is
stunning without comments compared with the one that we had in the XVIIth
century. However, I call back(remind) that the concept of dance show appeared
to the XVIIth century, and the problem is to know what for the XVIIth century,
not in the periphery of the art, not in sets and dress up, not in the evolution of
techniques but in his(her,its) central economy, in its fundamental conception,
what fundamentally evolved compared with these civilizational upheavals
which are ours today at this beginning of millennium. It was the question which
I put, and in all the interventions or yesterday almost all, I perceive fragments of
intonations which go to the sense of a deep modification of these
representations.
I thus ask these questions to the world of the art :
What is that the world the art witnesses these upheavals of the representation ?
Does it witness or not witness, that is if it is passive or active compared with
these evolutions of the world ?
What is what it expresses, it is the proactive of these civilizational evolutions, or
not ?
My answer is obvious. Still the world of the art has to perceive these things
there. It was my salute of yesterday morning and that finds perfectly echo in this
colloquium. I leave you opened to this questioning and I am very happy that we
notice it in the most advanced works of our scientists.
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Jean-François Mattéi :
I am very struck to hear Michel to speak about changes of civilization which
would be based on the disappearance of the representation …
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
No, not disappearance of the representation, the change of the representation
Jean-François Mattéi :
I do not believe. It is the disappearance of the representation, not the change
of the representation. We spoke just now about mirror neurons and about the
natural imitation which there is in a society. All sociologists noticed it. To live in
a society it is to imitate each other. The children imitate the gestures of the
parents. The parents are of grown-ups thus stand up straight, thus the children,
as soon as they stopped being held on all fours, try to put themselves up. Then
they reproduce gestures and words of the parents. Thus it has a phenomenon
of imitation.
Only there are two sorts of imitation, as says Greek “ Mimesis “. You have the
representation which consists in presenting again as indicates it the word of re
- presentation, the thing, for example a theater performance represents in a
analog way what takes place in the society, since the Greek theater. And the
dance also represents in a analog way religious, funeral or social rites (ballroom
dances, Viennese waltzes, learned dances, popular dances, faggot from
Auvergne, Argentine tango, etc.). But there is another way of imitating which is
no more domain of the representation, and it is the world into which we returned, it is the simulation. And that, somebody as Jean Baudrillard showed well
it. When you feign something, for example in the movie James Cameron’s
“adversity“, you have no more the slightest representation because everything
is feigned by computer. You have even no more a landscape, an object or a real
character who is re - presented on the screen. If I take Clark Gable, real
character in “ So much takes the wind “, I have 3 Clark Gable:
•
•
•
I have Clark Gable the movie actor of Hollywood who is well
known.
I have the role of Rhett Butler which it plays in “ Autant en
emporte le vent “ and there it represents him(it), and this
representation is indefinite because we can project the movie
20 years, 50 years, 100 after as long as there will be of the film
or any support of DVD type.
But today if you want to film “ Autant en emporte le vent “ in
laboratory to Sony Pictures in Hollywood, you can feign it
completely with computers in a way that you will have a more
true Clarke Gable, not only of his representation in the movie of
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the 40s, but also more really than Clark Gable himself. I mean
there that the skin of the face feigned by a computer will be finer
than the skin of the real face, in any case such as there were in
a real way in the 40s / 50 before the death.
And thus we are more and more in a universe of simulation with more and more
developed images. The question which I put to Michel, to everybody, it is to
know: what is that the modern dance went out of the representation, that is has
no more themes, dramatic narrative has more representation ?
We do not dance any more the “Swan lake”, “Nut-Cracker”, “Giselle”, that is we
do not represent any more a historic event. In the limit we could dance “The
man who laughs” of Victor Hugo as we danced “Roméo and Juliette” in “West
side story”. It is the adaptation of “Roméo and Juliette”, thus you are in the
representation there. If you create something radically new in a dance which will
not have music anymore, which will not have a choreography anymore, which
would be totally invented, what is what we are more in the field of the
simulation, that is we feign something which is more real than the reality.
Baudrillard says when he speaks about simulation: “the simulation is hyper
real”, that is more real than the reality. And moreover it is good what we make
in laboratories at the moment, including to Normale sup’ Sciences, that is we
make of the simulation of the reality in 3 dimensions more real than the
representation in 3 or in 2 dimensions, exactly as the television. Thus we
entered a universe of classic representation or a universe of postmodern
simulation?
I am struck to see that all the current techniques tend to go on this side with the
television, with the cinema, with the touchpads, but also with the politics into
which we returned. To what extent the postmodern democracy is not a universe
of simulation as such ? But it would be another debate.
Public :
But there it is of the technology. It is not the same thing for the live
performance ?
Jean-François Mattei :
Yes but we can wonder if the live performance will be still alive afterward,
because when you will have totally feigned robots in 3 dimensions, not only so
resembling as real men, but more resembling to real men than men and real
women, you will need maybe no more normal dancers, no more alive dancers.
In the post-modernity or in what we call the “transhumanisme”, we arrive there.
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Public :
With the holography that already exists.
Public :
We can inject a flea directly in the brain
Jean-François Mattei :
Yes. Apple works there above. Transmit all the information on glasses and in a
2nd time directly in the brain.
Jean-François Le Maréchal :
There is there a reflection on the sensitive here. Do you want to develop ?
Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet :
Here is an answer to your question. Are we there in term of antagonism or
disappearance of a model, either an interbreeding, an hybridization, in a
complex union of things ? I think that today, when we speak about dance,
about what takes place around the digital technologies which come to us
techno-sciences and which create these universes, we go into an imagination,
into a space where we are going to be able to interact in real time with these
environments. It is all the same to make act of creation at the level of the artist
and I join the comments of Michel who effectively questions on this dimension
of the anticipation of the creation. It is certainly in dance that the field opens
most widely possible. To give another example in the field of the opera which
crosses with these technologies, we revisit the directory. The opera singers, the
opera singers use the same directory but come to be added digital
scenographies. It is a little that embellishes with images that I want to see of the
world in which we live, they are hybridizations between the virtual and the
reality, and globally it is an extension of our sensors, our capacities and we are
always in the human being.
Jean-François Mattei :
And even in the reality. My philosophic position, it is because the reality always
has the last word. But nevertheless in the experience which we live at present,
it is the virtual which has, otherwise the last word, at least the first word. We
enter more and more virtual universes, if only by the television.
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Olivier Frérot, Vice-chancellor of the Catholic University :
We do not know what is the reality. Already I believe that we do not agree each
other on the fact that is the reality. Thus already I ask the questions: what the
reality? What the objectivity? What the sensitive? And there are beneath very
deep questions.
Jean-François Mattei :
It is an ontological question. In other words, there is some reality ? Personally,
on the philosophic or metaphysical plan I answer yes. I think that the reality - I
am going to please the mathematicians - is mathematical. If you want, I am
Platonic. A Platonic ontology consists in saying that there is some reality
somewhere.
Olivier Frérot :
Duly noted but you know that there we have different opinions.
Jean-François Mattei :
That’s it the problem. That is why we have discussions. In other words, what is
that it of the reality ? Of the represented? Of the feigned ? I believe that there
are no other positions. There is a reality whatever it, Pythagorean, is Platonic,
Marxist, or all that you want. That it is what we call the reality. There is a
representation of the reality, for example the photography of Niépce and
Daguerre and after there is a digital simulation
Jean-François Le Maréchal :
The simulation is a representation.
Olivier Frérot :
There are others examples. I am going to take the definition of Henri Maldiney.
“The reality it is for what I do not wait. The reality it is what is impossible to
think, impossible to plan, that moves quite the time”. It is the position of
Maldiney. That, that moves not bad. Thus on the question of the reality, the
objectivity, the ontology, we are not necessarily all right there above.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
The reality, the reality, that is it ? I try to formalize it in a work to appear soon (I
hope). I call real what lives in us and I call reality what surrounds us. The
foundation of the question of the western world, one of its first questions in any
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case 2500 years ago, it is know you yourself. When a man says such a word, it
echos, and made in arborescence our western civilization.
Philippe Verrièle :
We left on the side “God, its life, its work”, it is very interesting, but we are going
to extend beyond just a little the subject.
I think that we are not completely in the comment because the dance ever
represented nothing and what, in any case, the question of the representation
does not settle in dance. I have never seen a principal dancer being the prince
of the “Swan lake”. Simply because the prince of any story would not certainly
make two tours in the airs, “glissé-assemblé-brisé” to express something.
There is never a role in dance. He cannot have it in dance there. We are simply
in front of dancers who resume the place of a principal dancer dancing the
“Swan lake”. It is not the principal dancer who dances the prince of the “Swan
lake”, the principal dancer represents a dancer who dances the prince of the
“Swan lake”, and the only representation is there.
Contrary to what thought Noverre who spoke about the dance as the imitative
art, the dance imitates nothing, it is only in her even. And it is one of rather
interesting things that we had in particular in the demonstrations at the same
time of Eliane and Myriam, that to show how the notation of the dance is the
dance itself. It is not other thing than what is noted. In the same way, when we
ask the man who invented the tests on the intelligence, and which I do not
remember any more the name: what the intelligence ? He answers : “It is what
calculates my test”. And well what the dance ? It is what is noted as of the
dance.
Jean-François Mattei :
It is what we also said of the music and it is what also says Cézanne : the
painting of Saint Victoire, it is the painting of Saint Victoire and not the
representation of the painting of Saint Victoire. We fully agree above.
Philippe Verrièle :
There is another referent who is Saint Victoire. In dance, it is not there even.
Jean-François Mattei :
There is all the same a theme
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Philippe Verrièle :
No, a threesome, that is only a threesome. There is no other thing in the world
which is a threesome that a threesome. While there is something else which is
the mountain of Saint Victoire.
Public :
We wondered just now if the arts were precursory. I notice that in many arts, the
painting, the sculpture, the opera, etc., there was a massive introduction of the
new techniques and the representations of writings, even in the perfumes
where there is of the chemistry, the synthesis, … Computers play a quite
powerful role in many things, we can even reconstitute movies with Gabin if we
want him today. But in dance, there is a dancer with the body. This reality there,
as long as we shall not have replaced her by a robot, it is someone all the same
who is alive and who dances. It remains something of really.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
It is good a mental representation, whatever says it Philippe. I remember
Jean-Claude Ellena, the “nose” of one of our big creators of perfumes,
explaining that in the XIXth century, when we wanted to give the smell of the
rose, we assembled roses, we made it concentrations, essences, we diluted it
in the desired density, we threw it in a place and we had the smell of the rose.
Today, when we want to have the smell of the rose, we put 3 molecules which
are not the rose which create a space inside the system of the perception and
which wake in us the sensation of rose. It is about a system of mental
representation.
In the fact that we said just now, of the use of the technologies in a show, an
opera, etc., it is a question nothing of all this. It is about use of new techniques
in the game of representation of the images. It modifies nothing of the thought
of the show or not much.
Small bracket. In the XVIIIth century, the improvisation in music is a science. I
remind you the story of this sonata which Bach makes discover, one Sunday, to
Frédéric II. In front of the satisfaction of King, he suggests writing it. This is how
was born “the musical Offering”. Thus there is a system, the real science. If we
were capable with the technologies, to make so that with the presence of the
technology, we modify the matter of the singing, the matter of the dance, we
could talk about real interactions. Today in the theater, in the opera, in the
dance and in every arts of alive show, the technology is used only to embellish
a system of the images and the blatancy of efficiency confronts in the will of the
producers of these machines to see these sold machines.
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I give you an example: 12 years ago of it takes place in Athens a colloquium
financed by Apple and all the manufacturers of computing. Artists are invited
there, among whom Helene Black, a plastic Cypriot friend who confides me: if
I was invited, it is because I am known as user and interested in the
technological potential. The information which passed, it is : “In your works, the
necessity of the device has to appear”. And after these dates there, we have of
everywhere: “Xe are contemporary if there is an image of projection of
something with a gesture which we understand coming from technologies”.
There is no modification of the writing, there is a system of images, imaging, but
the representation is the same. If we were capable, as I told it to you, as the
musical Offering of Bach, to have a sung behavior, danced or expressed by the
words which feeds on virtual, yes, there, there would be “Composition” and not
simple representation of the images. We would not should take for reality what
is, on the cathodic walls of our own “cave”, only the reflection of these images
there. For me, there is there a trap.
Each of us and all together, we hold on our legs or in our beings by things which
structure us, and the knowledge of what structures us determine our being.
Now, the reality which surrounds us you, us, all, the parents, the professors, the
models allowed by neurons mirrors are a member of things which are outside
and which we integrate. But there is duality. When we speak about reality,
effectively, it is very important to agree on the terms. When we speak about
reality it is also necessary to agree on the terms. It is what I notice. The
questioning which I have is: have the art generally, and the dance quite
particularly, the intuition of these great semantic evolutions or are only they
following them ? And I do not answer this question … If, I answer it ! I answer
it this evening our way, with the dancers through this piece of new “Alive
Composition”, “2nd correspondence”, this evening at 8:30 pm in our Theater /
studio “aux Echappées Belles” where you are invited. You will see a work which
we realize since a number of years with Jean-François Le Maréchal, but work
which we realize in our “intimate laboratory” for 35 years. The return of this
“laboratory” there, so that it exists, exists only in your look. Today nothing exists
in the reality that the representation of what is said to us as reality. Thus if you
do not make the work exist in your look, this work does not exist, what allows
in a number of “princes” or of “traders of today” to say : “You do not exist”.
Because in your looks that does not exist. I think that the comment is there.
Jean-François Mattei :
Here is how we passed of the ontology in the politics with the arrival of the
“prince”.
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Michel Hallet Eghayan :
But it is for that reason and I say it with a lot of humility, a lot of serenity also,
for me, in art, there is really no problem of aesthetics. In art, there is no
problem of aesthetics, there are only problems of ethics (and this distingo is for
me a founder of the place of the Art in the heart of the City, inside beings). If we
quarrel on such or such aesthetics to know what beautiful wants to mean, we
find ourselves then in the debate of four centuries ago when at some point
Louis XIV decides to create the frame of the representation and to say: I want
to say that of the beautiful”. We model it at the conscious or unconscious level,
and we reproduce it 4 centuries later with different hats, different images and
even lights or projections of real or virtual images. It is the same system of
representation.
What shakes me, it is : “What is what we continue with new, contemporary
images, either what is what we put in a new way, today, at the beginning of the
XXIth century, the questioning on the being.”
Jean-François Mattei :
Simply a remark. Our conversation, and you are not wrong, is a little falsified on
the semantic plan. What we understand by representation. I remind you that
“representation” has all the same two senses. The fact of making again present
something, and the fact of updating the same thing. If it is in the Theater of
Chatelet the 3rd representation of a play, it means its 3rd demonstration as
such. But when you say that you attend a representation to the Theater of
Chatelet, you do not think of the fact of making again present. Thus
representation involves the idea of return on a presence which is not any more
there, during the “first one” as we say, exactly the “first” in dance, in opera, “ e
– presentation” which will be 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.
The simulation it is completely other thing, it is not the alive art, we fully agree
above because it is purely digital, thus purely calculated. What I believe and of
what I am afraid, but it is not the moment to speak about it, it is that all the alive
arts of the representation go, in my opinion, disappear completely for arts of the
simulation. Or, to say things more philosophically, we are going to return more
and more profoundly into “The cave of Platon”. And this cave will be
numerically calculated, what was already the case of Platon in the “Banquet”.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
It is the reason why pessimistic people of whom I am, have this firm conviction
for decades when we arrive there there. This is why I allow for 35 years to work
in “laboratory” what I call the “Alive Composition” because what says Philippe
Verrièle is fundamental. What makes dance, it is the act to dance, the dancer is
not in representation. What makes dance, it is what lives at this moment there.
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Jean-François Le Maréchal :
Maybe some questions ?
Public :
It is not really a question but can be more a suggestion, an intuition. Could we
reflect about some keywords and cross some concept of hyper reality to that of
increased reality ? And there to ask itself this question that I settled recently, an
increased body or an increased reality, that could be the opposite. We could
say the technologies are increased by our bodies and our thoughts, and thus
that there is a shape of mutilation. As well as we see appearing of new
materialities. We really observe that structures it.
Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet :
What you call “the new materialities”, specify increased “bodies” that I
understand better ?
Public :
There is in design, in architecture, a whole movement where we look not only
for new assemblies, we try to work on fruits of the physical sciences to create
new materials which will have a certain “intelligence”. We speak about
“intelligent materials” what is a bad translation of “smart materials”. There are
all these directions a specialist of which I am not, but I know that they really
exist and are really of current events.
Philippe Verrièle :
Regarding live performance, and regarding dance in particular, we have a very
old and good example of the fact what is the increased reality. That was
invented in 1820 in France. That is called “la pointe”. Contrary to the doxa, “la
pointe” is a very recent invention, and its invention aimed at allowing certain
dancers - we think that until 1860 there were still only the stars which used “la
pointe”- to be valued. It is confirmed in the memoirs of Ekaterina Wazem who
was one of big ballerinas of the XIXth century in Saint Petersburg and who tells
that for the representations of “Giselle”, there were only four principal roles
which used “les pointes”, the rest of the company was on “demi-pointes”. That
is this “technological tool”, even if it is not like that that we understand the
technology, “la pointe” today, which is a real technological tool, serves to give
more speed, more brilliance, more of going, more visibility in the movement of
the main soloists. In fact it is exactly the same process which is at work today
when we amplify of the sound, when we “resume” the presence of a dancer by
a system of in-house repeat broadcast. It is exactly the same type of
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functioning.
Question which we can then put, in particular in the
neurosciences: when we see a dancer on points, and there we are more in the
reality of the body but in that of an increased body, which mental imaging we
receive ? What we perceive of the body on the sensitive plan, which do we
receive as emotion of this body using an increased reality ? And the question is
rather perverse because, in fact, when we have a body, we are going to say
increased, by a technological effect, is what that is still something who speaks
to us at the cerebral level ? Roughly, what is that the images, the enactments of
Adversity may activate the same intellectual zone as when it is the human being
who makes it ? A true human being! What is that we receive in the same way a
dancer on “pointes” that a dancer not on “pointes”.
Public :
The answer is yes. Why ? Because the dancer on “pointe” is going to produce
all the same a biological movement. Even with points, that remains biological.
Philippe Verrièle :
At the same time I challenge you to turn(so fast as her if you have no “pointes”
on the foot !
Public :
At the same time we are very sensitive to the danced biological movement, to
the movement of the dancer. The basic experiment was led in the 70s. We put
his bright points, we make him dance in the black and we record the image.
Later we watch points moving. Except that if instead of giving the laws of the
biological movement to the speeds of these points, we give constant speeds
for the same movement, we shall have no perception of the biological
movement. And it is not the fact of adding a length on one of the segments that
is going to modify the perception of the movement.
Philippe Verrièle :
It is the movement thus that we perceive, it is not the shape. What makes the
humanity of a movement, the humanity of what we receive from the movement
it is not the shape?
Public :
Yes I believe.
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Philippe Verrièle :
I ignored it that, it is interesting.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
It is the clear expression that the dance is one of primitive arts.
Public :
Yes but when we see on points a dancer, I always have the impression that she
has to suffer and that at the same time it is very beautiful. I do not know if it is
true ?
Public :
I would want to extend what Mister Mattei was saying on the representation,
saying that to represent it is to represent something. But I would want to
complete, it is to represent something by means of something, other things,
that is with one semiotics. It seems to me that the characteristic of semiotics of
the dance, it is not to represent anything by the painting, the graphics, notes,
by an external language to the body but to represent it by the body of the
dancer. And it seems to me to be the characteristic can be essential and
impregnable of the dance, that is, in the dance, we are in the only art where the
body of somebody else - we spoke of “Roméo and Juliette’ or about “Giselle”
- is represented by a body, another body, and that, that seems to me
completely inflexible and completely essential in the dance. And thus the “body
of flesh”, in other words the “carnal body” compared with the discussions
about the simulation seems to me, within the framework of the dance as art,
aura of the difficulty being expelled.
Jean François Mattei :
Yes but all the performing arts return to what you say, that is in the theater, when
Louis Jouvet interprets such or such character, he lives it over the moment with
his own body.
Public :
We can say it the text of “L’avare’, we can represent it, he can have various
possible simulations there. I think that the technologies and the theatrical film
directors of today are of an overflowing imagination finally to delete, or I would
tell to weaken the presence of the body of the actor, to see can be even if to
cross it, contrary to the technologies. But to return to my comment, it is
because the body of the dancer seems to me do not can be deleted, replaced
- 95 -
or decreased, but only increased, to return to the previous comments.
Public :
I would want to return on what you said about “La cave de Platon’. Today we
are sure more really of the world in which we live, and, finally, we are any more
sure of no artistic discipline.
As you said it just now, we cannot trust any more the painting, we cannot trust
any more the cinema, we cannot trust any more in the song or in the music,
unless we have the singer or the musician in front of us, because everything is
altered. Thus we can trust not at all. Everything takes place today as if
something called us to enter a new dimension, of the universe, our universe and
our environment. It’s as if we called us to a certain shape of “release-grip”
which says to us attention, the landmarks that you had up to here are now
different. Now we create virtual worlds with the computing. There is a single
thing which remains immanent, and you expressed well her, it is here and now,
the present moment. And by what artistic discipline can we live here and now,
the present moment ? By the dance because exactly, you said it, the dance, it
is the body, it is by the body that she expresses himself and the movement.
Philippe Verrièle :
The body, all the artists share. Even the sculptor who makes of the sculpture in
the mass, his body is implied well. When Baselitz attacks tree trunks and when
he comes to work again them directly on the chain saw, it is not the chain saw
that we see, but well the track of its body. Thus in reality, it is good of the
movement question of which it is, because this time, it is good the body which
is most generously shared by the artists.
Public :
We return to this message there there: all which is movement is also dance. We
return to the appeal of the art in the street, the art there in the city. It also
reminds us Nietzche because what it is necessary to be to survive in these
virtual worlds: it is necessary to be a superman. Yet Nietzche shows him to us,
the superman, it is the dancer.
Jean-François Mattei :
You hint at the sentence of Nietzche: “I could believe only in a god who would
know how to dance”.
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Michel Hallet Eghayan :
What you said, is this step in fact, that the subject of the dance, it is the Subject
of the dance.
Public :
No. I said simply that in the dance, the subject of the dance is represented by
a body which is inevitably present and which cannot be put in brackets or
deleted. In the sculpture, we represent something else. It seems to me that in
the dance there is something completely paradoxical, that is the body which is
represented is another body, an alive body and it seems to me impregnable.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
Do not the lovers also have their body ? Any human activity is the expression
of the body. The problem of the dance it is because the dancer, him, makes use
of the very particular body. This private individual, it is the perpetual movement
in the perpetual imbalance.
Jean-François Mattei :
A remark all the same. You insist too much, each other, on the fact that the
dance, it is the use of the body living on the dancer. I remind you that the
dances are also recorded. There are dances in the cinema.
Philippe Verrièle :
Yes but there, it is not of the cinema rather than the dance ?
Jean-François Mattei :
No, it is the dance in the cinema, I regret it. It is a real dancer. It is Fred Astaire
who danced with Ginger Rogers or Gene Kelly with Cyd Charisse. There they
were two alive bodies, but now it is not more that simulations on dandruff, in
other words we can have a deferred dance and nothing says that the real dance
will continue. There is many more billion spectators of cinema and television
than million amateurs of direct opera or direct dance. And it’s only the
beginning. I do not claim to be satisfied with it, being a follower of the alive
direct arts as such, but nevertheless the virtuality takes it more and more today
in the XXIth century when it took it before the 50s, before the television to
simplify or touchpads. But there we go out of the problem of the dance.
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Public :
I’m a photographer, and the motivation to make images is not to have
sensitized surfaces which represent what I was able to see. My interest, my
intention, it is good to share it with others, thus it is good in the inside of the
fact that causes these images which are virtual compared with what I lived
when I was in the depths of Burkina Faso or of India. What I was able to see, I
took it to be able to transform it a kind of testimony of a reality there which is
lived inside.
Public:
I would want to return on a question around the relations between the artists in
a company, a troop, a theater. When there is show ; there is a leader, it is the
one who organizes, who conceives the direction, the scenario, it is thus the
choreographer. What is the power of this choreographer ? And when, as you
say it, we go towards more abstract things, which also dematerialize, I say to
myself that we are soon going to make some music or some dance without leader. What is what we can make of the orchestra without leader ? Of the dance
without choreographer ? Of the theater without director ? It is good to say that
the dancer, the actor is even going to invent him and in this case there to
change, because at the same time he improvises because there was nothing of
prepared or of planned. Actually, which kind of show to imagine you in the
future in the dance, in the theater or somewhere else? How’s that can be a
self-management inside artists’ team ?
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
I do not remember any more the name of the conductor but the first time when
the Orchestra of the Opera of Paris went, in the 50s in Bali, in front of the public,
the conductor was of back in front of the orchestra which he managed. People
have laughs by seeing this man stirring so. It had no sense for them because,
in Bali, the music does not so live. It’s written because it is people very
analytical as many Asian peoples but it is the real-life experience of the music
that makes that the music passes.
Philippe Verrièle :
At present, somebody as Grimal of the Orchestra Dissonnances developed with
his friends an orchestra which plays for example “The symphonies of
Beethoven” and there is no leader, and it works very well. The leader is a recent
invention of the XIXth century.
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Michel Hallet Eghayan :
In the 70s/80, the orchestra I began with a leader, and very quickly the leader
disappeared. When it plays “Orlando Furioso” with Marylin Horne, Victoria of
Los Angeles and many others, they do not need a leader. But it is a tension of
internal writing, and it is not pejorative, it is the tension which lives and not only
what is written. This tension of writing allows to have a new body which is the
body of the music until the harmony.
Jean-François Mattei :
I do not believe that we can assert totally the disappearance of the leader. The
first disappearance of the leader, it is in the 40s in New York with the death of
Toscanini. But the orchestra of Toscanini was so world-famous that it continued
to play after the death of its boss, the leader becoming the leader. Thus there
is always, otherwise a leader, quite at least one under leader or a representative
of the leader, or even if there is no more a representative of the leader, there is
somebody who puts them all right. And what puts them all right, it is the
partition.
Public:
In the music at least, there is a partition, thus one be going to play it and if the
musicians know how to play, they arrive can be to get organized another way.
But if we make some dance without music, that was said, without leader and
without anything of paper, how does it work ?
Jean-François Mattei :
Without dancers also! But that was !
Public :
In fact there is always a leader, because in all that you presented since
yesterday, in all about which you spoke, there are always rules. The dance and
the improvisation enters a frame. This frame it is: we are going to make a
classic ballet or a work on band of Liesegang. There is always a frame or quite
at least a guide. Even if it is not still represented by a person, for example in the
case of an orchestra, the leader, it is the body made by all the musicians.
Jean-François Le Maréchal :
There is always a leader. The leader is inside. Even in the baroque music and till
the beginning of the classic, the leader is the harpsichordist or the leader. And
it is a real leader. The partition does not just have to exist or the musicians just
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have not to be good so that the music is beautiful. One needs that somebody
who listens to it and transmits his interpretation, and what spoke Michel Hallet
Eghayan, it is the leader outside the orchestra, and the leader has no more big
role when the work of set was made. He gives the departure, he is going to have
a coffee and returns to finish.
Jean-François Mattei :
The difficulty comes from the thesis of Michel Hallet Eghayan of knowledge if
he can have a choreography without choreographer there, in other words what
is that the dancers can totally make an alive composition which would be
divested of relationship to Michel not to use choreographer’s term ? Can he
have a choreography without choreog rapher there ?
Public :
No I do not think because, when we saw the dancers yesterday evening, there
is no more a choreographer but there is “the other who becomes the
choreographer”.
Jean-François Mattei :
Thus there mirror neurons play a maximum.
Public
:
There is a study which showed, at musicians who improvised, that if we said in
one of them, “you are going to be the leader”, and in an other one “you not”,
they were less in harmony than if between them, without saying it, and without
perceiving it, they found their leader only. On the other hand, if we made the
same thing with musicians who were not experts in improvisation, there was
needed a leader so that they manage to work.
Philippe Verrièle :
I return on the group David Grimal about whom I spoke to you. “The
Dissonances” is a rather fascinating group because it is an constituted
symphony orchestra by refusing from the start the idea to have a leader. Grimal
is originally a violinist. The choice of the partitions is made in a collective way
and Grimal is door word there. One of the rather interesting things which
develops Grimal when we question him about this question, it is that the fact of
having no leader works around this rigorous cooptation around this idea to have
no leader, develops at the musician’s of the particular sound listening skills.
Then now it is an example and we do not argue from a single example. That was
not studied and I have no knowledge of the inside of what takes place there.
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Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet :
That’s it especially the problem. We are on speeches in which we tell what we
want and then we have no studies on the real practices. Besides it is door word
thus we do not know if his companions think that it begins to become more
important. And then it is more and more asked by the media, and we know
perfectly when we are a sociologist that, when we go to the flesh of the
relations, there is balance of power, relationships of power, with this idea to be
suspended by this social balance of power. In any case it allows to produce a
profitable illusion pure those who produce it.
Jean-François Mattei :
I would want to remind that leader’s absence exists not only in classical music,
but also especially in jazz and, from the beginning first jazz bands, in the “jam
sessions” where there is absolutely no leader. They turn. Sometimes it is the
bass player who gives the tempo, sometimes it is the trumpeter.
Philippe Verrièle :
Except that there is always a leader.
Jean-François Mattei :
Not inevitably. It was more for commercial reasons, to share the money. Then
there were leaders, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, etc. But in
reality they improvise all according to the partitions. The partitions of jazz are
very written but there is always a moment of free improvisation from the
partition which left a white for the tenor, etc. But there it is completely current
and still there I speak to you about classic jazz bands which make “jams” at 2
am in the morning, which they put themselves all around a piano or around a
double bass, and which they improvise on a given theme that they know all by
heart, obviously. But the free improvisation is also in early music.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
There is a thing which matters a lot, it is that the fact of prefiguring the future,
of saying for example that there is always a leader, allows to shape us in the
future. And there will be always a leader. The work of the artists within that
framework, the work which we make within that framework is to make that the
leader goes out of the person of flesh of the leader. Better than it goes out of
the person of flesh of a rotating leader, and than the leader is the dance. That
is it is the dance which has a given moment is the point of focus. The point of
focus, it is not any more the royal look on the royal perspective. It is the dance
which becomes focus of all the crossings of the looks of the dancers but also
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the spectators, supported, we see it, by the fact that we have just heard abour
mirror neurons naturally.
When our regretted Marc Jeannerod of the Institute of the Cognitive Sciences
came to the studio and explained us the function of the discovery of his Italian
friend, he spoke about the efficiency in 100%du brain for a gesture and, in the
representation, an intellectual efficiency of the order between 65 % and 80 %.
That is the efficiency between the representation of an image and the practice
of the gesture is almost equal.
At the spectator, there is in the body a real-life experience of that, what creates
the sensation of sympathy or empathy with the show. That is when the
spectator looks at this movement, at this dance, where from theory of the look
of the spectator on the “Alive Composition”, he lives in 80 % or 60 % in his body
what the dancer lives in 100 % in his. Thus there is effectively in this art of the
dance, the enthusiasts of dance because we are almost in a sensation to
dance. In the “Alive Composition”, it explains that there is here a kind of real
“Republic of the looks”, that is the crossed looks of the dancers on the dance
and not that of the leader. It is this verse which we tighten. That the dance is the
leader, that the crossed looks of the dancers and those of the spectators made
the real-life moment, it is what I invite you to come to live or to share this
evening at 8:30 pm in Narrow escapes.
Jean-François Mattei :
The question settles all the same to know if you can eliminate any frontality of
the look of the spectators ? Because, as soon as there is show, there is almost
ontological difference between the actors, as we see it in the Greek theater who
are on the proscenium which gave the stage and the spectators who look in
something that we call a theater. Theatrum, comes from “theaomai” which
means looking. The theater, it is the place where we look, and the spectators
who are “theorists” in Greek, are people who look. What is that we can
eliminate the function of the look, yet the look is always frontal, that’s it the
difficulty. The look is frontal always, not because leaves the word forehead, but
because it looks frontally. “Living Theatre” in the 60s wanted to delete the scene
and thus to delete the show, and to get involved to the spectators. There is a
little that they to make Michel Hallet Eghayan. But what is what there is another
show. If everybody mixes, it is not any more a show, it is what Rousseau called
the party. It is the Swiss party, in the canton of Vaud.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
It is not sure. I took in 1973 / 1974 an enormous “slap” when the company of
Cunningham danced in Coliseum of Nassau (a city next to the center of New
York) in a kind of sports center. The company was below, on almost all of the
space reserved generally for the sport, in front of 7000 or 8000 spectators with
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its 14 dancers. Cage had put as music 5 or 6 big horns, as the horns of the Alps,
and completely at the top, in the promenade, there were 8 or 10 pursuits for
only lights. And during the 1:10 am, I was alone at the top of Coliseum on the
covered way and I walked non-stop. The public sat, in front of the dance, when
any goshawk, I walked. I assure you that during 1:10 am, I saw the flow of a
dance which was in my real-life experience. And we exchanged, it was
unconscious at the dancer’s but it is clear that it was the look of the spectator
that made the work, that this look changed permanently, and that the fact
whether it is opposite is historically and ontologiquement really, but there the
look changed permanently and made the show for me. There is something very
strong in the studio of the Company to Vaise, it is that, in spite of the presence
of a frontal tier, the look is everywhere and the frontal position which is
ontological is only a particular case of this look. Today, within the framework of
a dance the measure of which would be the dance it even, and not that of the
look of the leader, even if this leader is not “Me” or other alternative leaders, the
look is possible and it is in this opening there that I invite you. It is great and
that seems to me to answer our being in the world of today. When we
choreograph “Giselle” or a “Return forward”, there is a projection idealized by
my look, by the analysis of the playwright Philippe Verrièle but there, in the
real-life experience of the “ Alive Composition “, there is something even more
fluid which is a treasure and which seems to me still unexplored.
Public :
But that can be extremely disturbing this kind of dance. Because, to have
participated in several performances of “1st correspondence”, either we
adhere, or we do not adhere. I saw rather violent reactions, sniggers even
laughter of persons which did not adhere. And when we discuss with these
persons who do not adhere, they say to us : “We did not want to let go our
emotion, thus we have laughs not to let speak our inside. We felt what took
place, we saw what took place but we did not want to accept it”. Afterward this
reaction was completely reversed and we saw the same persons the next day
adhering to 100 % on the same proposal, even if it was not naturally the same,
of the fact of the nature of this work of “Alive Composition”. What implies, when
we propose this type of dance, when we cannot explain it.
It is extremely difficult to communicate what is taking place and if we do not
drop the barriers of a priori, we cannot adhere to this shape of dance. We are
going to be on the backward movement of its own view on the look of the
dance.
Jean-François Mattei :
Last remark on the frontal vision which we have at the moment each other,
because we make you front and you make front face to face of us, the classic
theater does not still know this frontal vision. To take classic author between all,
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William shakespeare, to the Theater of the Globe in London, the theater was in
circle and the stage was in the middle. All the spectators were all around, and
even installed on stage. This theater was recently reconstituted in London and
we see it in the state “feigned” by what it was, in the initial state and there, you
have no more this aspect of frontal spectator face to face of a stage or face to
face a screen. It remains that, there is always an exchange of looks which we
cannot eliminate as such.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
In the “1789” of Mnouchkine, she puts 4 or 5 wagons, she opens the pieces of
the wagon, the wagons with their gear wheels XVIIIth style, wagons distributed
in an immense space with the public any goshawk and stages open to the right,
to the left. Thus, the fact of being frontal is not the guarantee of the look of the
spectator. What is protected from the look of the spectator, it is the real-life
experience orders, what I I call the reality, this intimate real-life experience
which crosses itself with the look of the actors and that creates a real “Republic
of the looks”. “Republic of the looks” who speaks less this time about the look
of the power than about the power of the look.
Jean-François Mattei :
You are really a son of the Republican School.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
It is just a little what the scientific presentations reveal, a vibration of necessity
of the real-life experience different from the unique centered object.
Public :
I return on what said Madam just now, talking about a situation of refusal of
participation of the spectator, the critic. But if the public has a position of
opening and listening, attention, because the refusal removes the attention, it
turns its look inside …
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
It is even calculated. The refusal or the support, cerebrally, it is understood and
calculated. I have a friend, that you know all well, who is called Jean-Louis
Martinelli, excellent director, who says one day on France Inter this very
beautiful thing : “The Theater requires a preliminary act of faith”. I find that it is
so deep and so true. And this act of faith sends back to the reality about which
we spoke just now …
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Philippe Verrièle :
But an act of faith of whom ? Because behind that, there is all the same a
question of the power. To make an act of faith, it is all the same to give to be
able to somebody, and nothing guarantees whether it is the creator, the
choreographer, or the dancers, or the comedian or the director who has the
power. I think on the contrary that it is the spectator who have the power. The
proof, it is because if spectators decides to go out, nothing prevents him from
it, and the act of exit is infinitely more powerful than all can shout any singer,
dancer or comedian.
Jean-François Mattei :
And if he decides not to go into the room it is still better, he does not pay.
Philippe Verrièle :
The power it is the spectator, it is not on the stage.
Public :
I want to intervene about what is said, because I have a concrete example. In
the 70s, we attend a concert in Dresden. We enter a church, we are with a
couple of friends. He sing, like the music, is fascinated. She, goes with coal nuts
to feet there, by saying, I bear but finally … And this year there, suddenly there
is something. There is something us all. We feel that there is something at the
musicians, there is something at the leader, there is something with us, and we
do not know what. In any case it is very powerful, it is so powerful that at the
end of this performance, we find ourselves and we want to share, as if the
musicians, the leader and we were in every close relations, as if we shared a
common world. And this friend in question says to me, I do not know what
happened to me. Years later I meet another person than I did not know about
the period and I say to her : “Listening, once, happened to me a thing”. Then I
speak to her about this concert, I say to her neither the date nor anything. She
says to me “it was in the … years”, and she was there. And she still
remembered herself of what had passed there. I want to say that it is the power
of the fact that happens when people are connected.
Pierre-Emmanuel Signoret :
But what is that if we had conducted an investigation, the real investigation at
the exit of the public, what is that we would have had in a homogeneous way
this feeling of state of grace that you knew? Not sure. You are in the faith.
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Public :
And well listen to, seen the sway in the crowd which there was at the exit of this
concert to rush some to the others, and well it was strong, and it was at least
the proof in number that we had really been all touched by what took place in
this sort of meeting and what had touched each in the depths of the fact that it
was. Can be in a different way, but in any case which had left a track.
Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet :
For example, what would be really interesting, it is to see those who were not
touched. And to understand what are …
Public :
Yes but the “applaudimètre” is there to make the statistics.
Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet :
But it is not at all the problem. That it is a sociological problem. The
sociological problem it is, if we are in the faith and we adhere in a strong way
to speeches which produce some faith, roughly we do not produce science. If
we try to understand what are the social conditions of possibility of adhering to
this type of aesthetic production, there we begin to think differently and as a
result, what is interesting, it is to think marginally also because finally, people
who would not be members in this reception there, as a result, they tell in a way
that is the standard.
Finally we are in the production of a speech a lot which is a matter of the faith
and it is funny because we are in the ENS of Lyon which is rather the place of…,
and finally it is it also the confrontation between arts and sciences, it is the
question of the faith, the support in the faith and the scientific criteria which
oppose to it, or not. Because the science, in some respects, it is also a
production of faiths.
Jean-François Mattei :
Having said that, in all that you have just said each other, what you lived is not
exceptional. It managed at me repeatedly, as in some of my music-loving
friends, in the opera, to see people who are suddenly enthused, who raise
themselves, who make a real “status ovation”, not the false “status ovation” as
in the awarding of the Oscars or other meetings of this type. When people are
enthused, they raise themselves totally, as what you certainly go to make later
when we shall leave, I hope for it well, because the movements of the
dancers or the movements of the musicians completely transported them. It is
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called an emotion, one “e - motion” and motion that means movement. It is for
nothing that it always shows itself by a movement of the body.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
I would just a little want to set, as a dancer, against foot of what says
Pierre-Emmanuel, because if we call faith the gratitude of a real-life experience,
there is a faith everywhere. There we cannot speak about faith. The faith, that
would be make so that, not having lived that, and creating the most poetic
possible speech - it is the case for example of the Bible where the narrative is
the most poetic possible in the chosen translation - the return of the event of
the “Passion of the Christ” for example, generate a mechanism of faith. There
is no personal real-life experience of the passion has faith there. There it is
about other thing. It is about the gratitude of a real-life experience, yet the
definition of Pierre-Emmanuel, it is the opposite of the faith.
Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet :
In fact we do not get on on the terms. That is in fact that what she speaks, it is
of the universality of the new judgment, and I what I speak it is of social
conditions of possibilities of having this judgment.
Public :
Except that what questioned me, it is that this person who did not bear the
music, had this revelation.
Michel Hallet Eghayan :
This is why in your comments, I do not feel research for the universal, it is the
experiment of a real-life experience, it is the happiness of the meeting, that
exists in love, that exists in art, that exists in the big moments of life.
- 107 -
Colloquium conclusions
by a dancer
and Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet
Master of education and research at the Faculty
of social and political Science of Lausanne,
Privileged witness of this colloquium, Pierre-Emmanuel Sorignet delivers us
here some notes taken in the course of the interventions which participated to
build, in reaction, its own reactions and conclusions.
Introduction
“A science halfway between two scientific initiatives is not a science halfway
the science.” (Before comment)
These probabilities it is necessary to find them if we want to say something
useful. By refocusing the ambitions around the statistical questions, we can
reserve a predictive character.
There is no fate but incapacity to measure the initial data to be certain to plan.
The only tool which the man has is to use the probability tool. The world is
determinist in the abstract.
Historicization of the social conditions of production of the popularization of a
theorem which in return can make happen (subsidy, created post) the resolution
of that this.
Durkheim
He had difficulty imposing the existence of this discipline. He had to convince
the intellectuals of his time, in particular the philosophers and the
psychologists, of its importance. Against the philosophers, he had to impose an
empirical approach, guided the will to establish facts and to analyze them, while
the philosophy is more attached to an initiative of pure reasoning, and
normative sentence of the facts and the behavior.
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Social fact characterized by its exteriority and the constraint.
•
The exteriority : these ways of behaving, to think, to smell exist except
the individual, of the sense where the individuals find them already established
in their birth.
Example : the social habits, the language
Our behavior here, preexists before us (that of the Professor as those
Students), but also the fact of eating at table with flatware, of greeting people
whom we know. We resume habits, existing codes. Most of the behavior, but
also the manners to think and to feel, taboos and taste do not arise from the
very individual.
•
Constraint : the social fact is imperative upon the individuals, as a
constraint. These ways of behaving, to think, to smell are compulsory. All which
is compulsory is not felt as a painful duty. The individual can subscribe to this
obligation, not feel the constraint, and most of the time, he does not feel as
binding these manners to make, to smell to think social
It is when we break the social obligations that we perceive the binding
character because then we incur a penalty.
Other example was taken by Durkheim, the monogamy cannot understand by
the sexual jealousy. On the contrary, there is sexual jealousy because there is
monogamy.
Any explanations not socio of the suicide ( 1897 ). Causes are not : the
psychopathic states (typify hallucinations, or alcohol), the race and the heredity,
the cosmic factors, the imitation.
-
Test every time existence or not of a " regular and indisputable
relation " between variables ( p53 ). While discussing the
relevance of certain classifications (ex race p54-58).
REMINDER on the "founding" role of DKM ET on the suicide (statistical
regularity and social causes).
Example : the seasonal variations of the suicide ( p98-106 ): number of suicides
increases when days lengthen(stretch out) from January till April, and slows
down in April-June; take place in the daytime rather than harms her(it), and
especially the morning and the afternoon, with calm at around midday ( p100 ).
Rhythm of the suicides follows the rhythm of the intensity of the collective life
(and not temperature for example, cf. differences according to country): "”the
- 109 -
day favors suicide because it is the moment when the business is the most
active, where the human relations cross themselves and cross" ( p99-100 ); the
social life " its excitement " (102). EX : the number of transported travelers, or
the number of accidents increase in the spring and summer and the reduction
in the autumn and winter. “If the suicides become more numerous from January
till July, it is not parce qie the heat exercises a disruptive influence on the
bodies, it is because the social life is more intense”; what plays is not “physical
environment” but “social conditions” (106).
NB : general idea : the suicide is stronger when the social life is intense. This
thesis is verified always today on a weekly rhythm : feminine rate of the
suicides falls from Monday till Sunday, with increase on Wednesdays before
1972 (when on Thursday was day of vacation for the children, increases on
Thursdays (baud p25). The women commit suicide more their day of break,
when they are away from the social life.
Other example : the psychological and irrational strengths which push certain
persons to the murders, to harass in the work … Browning on common
persons.
The Sociologist's job
At the end of the 60s, Bourdieu, Chamboredon and Passeron, in their textbook
and balance assessment of the sociological practice entitled “The job of
sociologist”, present, further to the evolutions of the modern epistemology (in
particular works of Bachelard), a more constructivist vision of the proof in
sociology. To consider the fact social as a scientific fact is made according to
them in three stages.
•
The first one consists in breaking with the prejudices, in the help in
particular of the reflexivity and of an exploratory prerequisite on behalf
of the researcher,
•
The second consists in building the reasoning, being understood that it
still has theoretical presuppositions and never pure objectivity in
the observation..
•
The third stage is the one which consists in noticing or “to experiment
by the facts”.
The difference which separates the spontaneous sociology (pure and simple
submission in the suggestions of the quite made metaphors) from a sociology
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capable of settling its movements of sense, can hold only the control of the
comparison, historic or statistical. Of what consists then this control of the
comparison and more globally the sociological reasoning ?
The sociological reasoning is thus characterized by it “goes and comes”
between statistical reasoning and historic contextualisation. But to describe
like that the epistemological place of the sociological reasoning does not
prevent that we still speak about a science.
It is advisable to think about the capacities of the researchers to subscribe to
such or such type of paradigm, that is to make a sociology of those the same
who institutionally produce justifiable knowledge allows to extend this
epistemological reflection.
Fate and sociology
About Merce Cunningham : “He tried to go out of their habits.”
John Cage (the best music it is the one that I did not hear). Becker and the
routines (for example on the improvised music).
Merce Cunningham : he had to manage the movement thought that the total
uncertainty was impossible. It was necessary to tighten towards it and to find a
way to make it (uncertainty probabilisable). “The book of the changes” (book
which centres the changes).
The changes
•
•
•
The question of the constraint on the individuals and of this relationship
in it forced.
The positions of the dancers in the space was built on “procedures
chances” (convention).
The dancers chose.
“Everything was private in the process of Merce Cunnigham. He imposed his
decision. You accepted it or not.”
The relationship between fate and luckchance is a way of hanging of the social,
of setting up an innovative, distinctive process in the field. With a shape of
import-export of legitimacy near(on the side of) the plastic arts, near the most
provocative hillside and the most innovating ( Duchamp).
“There was child's enjoyment. We were exempted from the responsibility from
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finding the sense of all this. It was a question of not worrying about the sense”.
“When he prepared a lot, the “procedures chances” were very specific. He
never revealed what was going to take place. He revealed it only at the last
moment (it created by the specific arrangements of the dancers) ;
He created movements and organized that in a very strong way.
He made decisions and did not reveal them and stayed in the mystery. It was a
tool (social magic, charisma of the choreographer).
It is advisable to think about :
•
•
•
•
the
the
the
the
notion of cooperation enter artist the aesthetic production,
use of the “procedures chances”,
Charisma of the choreographer,
disposal of the dancers.
Think sociologically of the notion of chaos
The notion of pleasure formulated by the mathematician René Thom it's the
same in sociology. The side to smile ironic of the sociology.
“I worked on the edge " (René Thom dead mathematician 10 years ago). All his
work consists in saying when I pass of a group in its outside, I pass on the edge
and when I pass on the edge, there is a disaster.”
Relationship with time
The sociology thinks of more tendencies than of cracks, breaks. The statistical
series usually mark tendencies rather than breaks : when she wonders about
the temporality, the sociology takes for object the reproduction or the change,
and not the transformations.
The history seems better placed than these two disciplines. The history likes
“the event”, although the school of annals oppose to an essentially factual
history.
•
•
Consider that the event establishes a break of comprehensibility.
The usual obvious fact of the understanding is suddenly suspended : at
a moment, we do not understand any more. The sense becomes
uncertain.
We are plunged into the regime of the extraordinary of what not knows
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•
•
•
•
•
•
more how to say itself or at least is not any more if on.
The event by himself is problematic and “problématisant”.
The present of the event exists only as line of division between two
worlds, mutually unintelligible, explaining the necessity of the
interpretation which set up the social sciences.
The Dreyfus affair, the French revolution = break of comprehensibility.
Dice while the event is perceived as line of division, the work social
sciences joined the experience of the actors, at least in a first moment.
Idea of contraction of time and institution of a new calendar.
Idea that the action makes the time.
Emphasizing the temporality means centering the reflection on the
individual subject.
Be interested at the same time in the peculiarity of the event as such
and in that of the individual who is an actor.
The contribution of the social sciences it is the construction of relevant
series, series in which the event takes sense.
The time engenders in the acting out or in the thought, it is the effect of a
practice and a not cause or a condition of this one.
To establish the time in impersonal category, in shape of the experience, it is to
deprive it of the essential dimension, the temporality.
The time is so much the product of a situation practises that the effect of the
practices which we can have of this situation.
Thinking about the conditions of production and of experience of the
temporality (Time and domination, keep waiting).
Analysis of practices of the temporality the diversity of which does not hold
mysterious “cultural variations” but sends back to the specific constraints
which confers on every situation its temporal peculiarity.
Elasticity of real-life time : time of the district / time of the university. The time,
relationship with the action and thus, relationship with the power. If the time is
a product of practice, it is also an effect of the balance of power within which
this practice takes place.
The unemployed persons of Mariental (1950)
Paul Lazarsfeld (investigation by “questionnaires”, statistical)
The experienceof the unemployment expresses himself there in the rough, in its
almost metaphysical truth of experience of the dereliction.
Through biographies or testimonies - I think for example of this unemployed
person who, having written hundred and thirty job application letters, quite
remained without answer, stops, giving up its research, as emptied of any
energy, any run-up towards the future-, through all the conducts which the
investigators describe as "irrational", which it is about purchases appropriate to
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destabilize durably their budget or, in another order of the abandonment
of the political newspapers and the politics for the benefit of the newspapers of
news items (nevertheless more expensive) and of the cinema. What is engaged
or betrays itself, it is the feeling of solitude, despair, even nonsense, that is
imperative to all these suddenly deprived people not only of an activity and a
salary, but a reason for being social and so sent back to the naked truth of their
condition.
The retreat, the pension, the resignation, the political “indifférentisme” (Romans
called it quies) or the leak in the millenarian imagination are so many
demonstrations, quite so surprising for the expectation of the surge
Evolutionary, of this terrible rest which is the one of the social death. With their
work, the unemployed persons lost thousand nothingness in which comes true
and shows itself concretely the function socially known and recognized, that is
all the composed purposes in advance, except any aware project, in the form
of requirements and of emergencies (urgent matters) - “important” meetings ,
works to be handed, checks to make leave, estimate to be prepared -, and all
the future already given in the immediate present, in the form of deadlines, of
dates and of schedules to be respected - bus to take, works rythm to hold,
worls to be finished. Deprived of this objective universe of incitement) and of
indications which direct and stimulate the action share and, there, all the social
life, they cannot live the spare time which is left with them that as injury time,
time for nothing, rendered meaningless. If the time seems to perish, it is
because the work is the support, otherwise the principle, of most of the
interests, expectations, requirements, expectations and investments in the
present (and in the future or the past which it implies), in brief one of the major
foundations of the illusio as commitment in the game of the life, in the present,
as presence in the game(, thus in the present and in the future, as essential
investment which - all the wisdoms always taught it by identifying the tearing in
time with the tearing to the world .
Excluded from the game, tired to write to the Santa Claus, to wait for Godot, to
live in this non-time when it arrives nothing, where there is nothing, where there
is nothing to wait, these people dispossessed of the vital illusion to have a
function or a mission, to have to be or to make something, can, to feel existing,
to kill the non-time, resort to activities which, as the triple forecast, the totocalcio and all the games of chance which happen in all the shanty towns and all
the favelas of the world, allow to reintroduce for a moment, till the end of the
game or until Sunday evening, the wait, that is the finalized time, which is by
one source of satisfaction. And to try to tear away from the feeling, that
expressed so well the Algerian members of the underclass, to be the toy of
outside strengths (“I am as a peel on the water”), to try to break with the
fatalist submission in the strengths of the world, they can also, especially the
youngest, look in acts of violence which cost in themselves more or as much as
by the profits which they get, an average desperate person to make
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“interesting”, to exist in front of the others, for the others, to reach in brief a
recognized shape of social existence. Professionals of the interpretation,
socially appointed to give sense, make reason, to tidy up, the sociologists,
especially when they are the followers conscious or unconscious of an
apocalyptic philosophy of the story, attentive to the breaks and to the decisive
transformations, are not the best placed to understand this disorder for nothing,
otherwise for the pleasure, these made actions so that there is something, to
make something rather than anything when there is nothing to make, to reaffirm
in a dramatic way - and ritual - that we can make something, it would be about
the action reduced to the breach, to the transgression, thus assured “to make
sensation” in any case, in the failure as in the success.
Building autonomous languages to legitimize
About the notation
“I resumed all the Laban's vocabulary. I resumed all its crosses. I am going to
be obliged to cross( by top my hips. A sign it is not bound to a shape but also
to a quality of movement.”
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Invention of a little bit esoteric language. System of faith which confirms
itself in performative speeches with dancers. Allows of to make
“school”, to establish a distinctive position in the field. (Telegraph
Chappe: reference given by mathematicien Etienne Ghys).
“It is at once to incorporate. I was in my story of yoga a lot. Move closer to the
body of the mental of the physical body.”
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As at Swinston (CNDC / Merce Cunningham) the dance and dancer are
“désencastrés” in their social membership, of it concrete
dimension of the work of dancer and choreographer. The comment is
suspended above the contingencies appropriate to the process of
creation. These notations appear as investment of form ( Thévenot) who
authorize a shape of neutralization of balance of power appropriate to
any working situation.
To what are of use these notations, to give a justifiable shape in one
claim to belong to the justifiable culture likened to the university culture
(She indicates, during lunch, that she did not study legitimize and that
she has no competence to judge the speech of philosopher.)
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“2nd correspondance”
by Hallet Eghayan
dance Company
Gymnasium of ENS Lyon
Thursday, March 28th, 2013
Performance - danced conference of 1 hour
staging
8 dancers,
1 musician / composer,
1 light and vieo designer ,
1 scientist / professor of ENS Lyon,
1 choreographer
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After “1st correspondence“ in 2012 which approached the laws of movements
in large numbers, the collaboration between the Hallet Eghayan dance
Company and the ENS of Lyon (Superior teachers’ training college) us in 2013
to approach a new scientific theme: the mathematical and physical laws of the
Liesegang bands, giving birth in “2nd correspondence”.
The “Alive Composition” here proposed, reveals a compound dynamic dance
mainly of contacts and of carried allowing the dancers, thanks to these
scientific mechanisms, the rhythmical organization of the space and of time,
just like the Liesegang bands*.
The “Alive Composition”, this new the Art of the dancer, allows to dance
“Landscapes” opening an artistic way which gathers the dancers in the
perpetual imbalance of their own creation.
These creations owe nothing to the improvisation, either at random, or to the
luck, they are the fruit of deliberate decisions which take themselves at the
speed of light. These creations make us live other manners to make, other
methods of collection, far from our habits, far from the tradition of the show,
because every representation is unique. What we see, we shall not see again it
any more, it is other thing than we shall see, because we are already
somewhere else.
Dancers, musicians, lighting engineers, costumers, all work in the same way,
revealing a new artistic universe which speaks profoundly about us today.
Michel Hallet Eghayan
* R.E.Liesegang ( 1869-1947 ),
German physicist, is the first one to
reveal in 1898 the organization of the
structures of the matter on the mode
of the repetitions of lines, the forms,
the colors, in the animal, plant and
geologic kingdom. In a general way
his theory explains the formation of
the structures which can create the
order of the chaos.
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For many years, the Hallet Eghayan dance company has developed major
projects involving art and science. These projects open new perspectives on
dance and participate to scientific literacy development . This approaches has
lead to :
•
•
•
•
The creation of a festival “Arts and Sciences” that traveled within
Rhone-Alpes in 2000 and 2001.
The development, since 2003, of a project merging science research
and artistic creation. This projet was initiated by the “Musée des
Confluences” in Lyon. It lead to four “danced conferences” and
choreographic works in the theme “arborescence” with Pascal Picq,
paleoanthropologist in the College of France, and one danced
conference with the astrophysicist Roland Bacon.
Many educational and cultural activities for school students. These
activities have promoted public access to culture and knowledge.
Public from part of the city with low access to culture (La Duchère and
Pierre Benite) were the main target of this program.
A collaboration on the theme “Arts and Sciences” has been started
with the “Ecole Normale Supérieure” of Lyon since 2007 . This
collaboration has favored new kinds of relations between researchers,
scientific students and dancers. These dancers were either students or
professionals. Such a collaboration has been structured with the PASS
project (Pole Arts Sciences Society) since 2011.
Today
“PASS” promotes new relations between scientists and professional dancers.
This project is supported by the City of Lyon, the Rhône-Alpes Region and the
state with the label “Investment for the Future.”
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It aims at promoting knowledge and practice imbedded in new artistic and
curtural dynamics for research and diffusion of scientific knowledge. It is also
a ressource for research in contemporary art.
More than choregraphy, PASS members develop lanscapes that reveal
dancer-art more than choregrapher-art. This approach has been named
“Composition Vivante” (living composition).
During this meeting, the dance company proposes three examples of these
lanscapes, all based on actual physical and chemistry research topics.
More informations about the PASS and the Hallet Eghayan dance Company
http://www.ciehalleteghayan.org/pass.html
http://www.pole-arts-sciences-societe.info/
PASS
c/o Compagnie de danse Hallet Eghayan - 65 / 73 rue du Bourbonnais 69009 LYON (FRANCE)
tel : +33 (0)4 78 64 84 98 - fax : +33 (0)4 78 64 87 60
email : [email protected] - site web : www.ciehalleteghayan.org
The Company is subsidized by le programme Investissements d'Avenir, le Ministère de la Culture DRAC Rhône-Alpes,
le Ministère de l'Education Nationale, de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche, la Préfecture de Région / Fond
Interministériel de la Ville, la Région Rhône-Alpes, le Conseil Général du Rhône, le Grand Lyon, la Ville de Lyon, la Ville
de Pierre Bénite, la Mission Académique d'Action Culturelle. Elle reçoit le soutien de la Spedidam et de l'Adami. The
Company thanks her partners : Le Musée des Confluences, l'ENS de Lyon, l'IDRAC, le Collectif Designers +, SaintEtienne Métropole, le Théâtre Libre de Saint Etienne, le pôle de compétitivité Techtera (Textiles/Matériaux souples), le
pôle Optique Rhône-Alpes et le Groupe ATC. The Company receives the help to the sponsorship of the members of her
club of companies “Echappées Belles”
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