REANIMATION

Interactive piece for a dancer and spectators, 2005 - 2008
Samuel Bianchini and Thierry Fournier

Stage directors and design: Samuel Bianchini and Thierry Fournier
Choreography and performance: Sylvain Prunenec
Gesture analysis and real-time music: Thierry Fournier
Computer graphics programming: Frédéric Durieu
Animation: Samuel Bianchini
Production: École nationale supérieure d’art de Nancy, France, in the framework of the Atelier de recherche et de création ElectroShop and the Alliance Artem; Espace Pier Paolo Pasolini - Théâtre international de Valenciennes, France, with support from Groupe ICN
and Groupe SFR-Cegetel
With the collaboration of Jean-François Robardet, François Schulz, Ève Vitré (students in 2005 at the École nationale supérieure d’art, Nancy); Marie Duchêne and Jean-Grégoire Khérian (students in 2005 at the École nationale supérieure des mines, Nancy); Lisa Deschamps, Clarisse Joly and Hélène Perreau (students in 2005 at ICN Graduate Business School, Nancy); Marine Fechtig, Mathieu Redelsperger and Emilie Salquèbre (students in 2008 at the École nationale supérieure d’art, Nancy); and Nathalie d’Auzon, Pauline Boyer and Claire Payement
Thanks to Antonio Guzmán and Marc Thébault

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REANIMATION, Samuel Bianchini and Thierry Fournier, 2005 - 2008
NeXt - International Arts Festival, Espace Pier Paolo Pasolini - Théâtre international de Valenciennes, France, November 29, 2008.
Photograph: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

REANIMATION is at once a performance and an installation: a dancer and the audience share the same stage. A game court, rectangular and somber, is split into two spaces by a large screen on which is projected the image of a dense white fog. Spectators and dancer face each other from their respective sides of the screen. The fog is opaque, but the presence of the spectators projects shadows onto the screen, and these try to follow them, clumsily but obstinately, like zombies. The shadows appear and increase in size, depending on the movements, and on the distance, between the spectators and the screen. As they emerge from the fog, the shadows produce a transparency effect on the screen that makes the dancer visible on the other side of it. These variable conditions of visibility depend on the movements of the public. The conquest of visibility that occurs upon approaching the image prompts in the viewer the experience of space and, more specifically, of depth: spatial depth (that of the stage), visual depth (of the atmospheric image) and temporal depth (that of a choreographic and musical writing). The position and movements of the dancer register on the screen. The dancer plays music–which answers to his speed, position and movements, as if he were a ‘tape head’ in space–in real time. He enters and exits the sounds through ‘zooms’, folds and ‘extensions’ that lengthen or shorten the time of the musical phrases composed for a string and voice quartet. Between choreographic and musical gestures, the choreography anchors itself to the stratification of a space that has, as a whole, become an ‘instrument’. The variations in speed, the movements and the gestures: at bottom, all translate a play with this space that is as much instrumental as it is confrontational–indeed, it is a struggle with the image and the spectators. Outlined in the convergence of the choreography, the movements of the public, the image and the musical composition is a writing of depth.
At once a playing field and an instrument, the stage posits the conditions for a live performance that acts upon an image of the inanimate. Calling into question a set of conventional attitudes so as to prompt others, REANIMATION is a call to action, an activation on either side of the stage and screen, a dynamic confrontation in which the performance is just as much the work of the dancer as of the spectators.

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REANIMATION, Samuel Bianchini and Thierry Fournier, 2005 - 2008
Rencontres chorégraphiques de Carthage, 8th edition, Tunis, from May 1 to 9, 2009.
Photograph: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP