DD DORVILLIER
human future dance corps

From a vantage point overlooking the ancient courtaou of Artigussy and the Gaoube rivulet, it's possible to see someone disappear into the distance in broad daylight. It's a crossroads where numerous hiking trails blur into the pasture and intersect at the foot of the ruins of the shepherd's hut, not far from a gully and its laytés.

Landscape Stories is a site-specific dance performance that journeys between and connects three very different sites: the ancient “courtaou” of Artigussy in the Campan Valley (Hautes-Pyrénées), the Potager du Roi (Versailles), and the Camp Celtique de Bierre (Commune de Merri in Normandy).

These sites share remarkable archaeological, biological and cultural histories, as well as a visual and spatial amplitude that makes it possible to play with perspective and scale. Through the exploration of these places, and through meetings, visits, and interviews with people who are passionate about them and committed to their preservation, a rich sedimentation of experiences has been developing and leading to a performative form that adapts itself to each of the sites.

In Landscape Stories, gesture, sound, color and language reverberate in the landscape. The audience's ears and eyes follow the four performers' movements, the paths of sound, the contours and detours of the site. The result is a concert of appearances, disappearances, echoes, shadows and playful doubles.

A series of dance scores emerged from a dream after practices and writings during studio sessions and site visits. After naming and describing the dances from the inside, and writing them, I understood that they were familiar to me, but also different, and would not have emerged but for the site visits, interviews, and group practices that took place prior to this dreaming. 

The scores are practices can be used as research tools, and they are choreographic. We have been developing them with the resonances of the three outdoor sites in mind. At each iteration of the work the idea is to structure the content in dialogue with the site. The performers each learn the same sequence as a solo, and then dance this solo as an overlapping canon, or as a simultaneous solos which eventually become a quartet. This material is also the springboard for a new solo work Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone.

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