At the Dance Biennale in Lyon, choreographer Boris Charmatz presents “Liberté Cathédrale”, his very first French creation with the ballet of Tanztheater Wuppertal, Pina Bausch’s company which he has directed for several months.
Designed to be played in Lhe churches, however, it is in a former industrial site that Liberty Cathedral is presented For the first time to the public as part of the Biennale de la danse Lyonnaise. There, in the factoryhome appliance Fagor-Brandt, located in the Gerland district of Lyon, Boris Charmatz brings together around thirty dancers. A creation singular punctuated by the music of Beethoven (the 2nd movement of the piano sonata opus 111), the breath of organs and volleys of bells.
The sounds of Lyon
Boris Charmatz knows the capital of Gaul well. Born in Chambéry in 1973, he studied dance at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Lyon. It was also there that, barely out of the Conservatoire, he presented with Dimitri Chamblas his first show, Head on. It was in 1993, at Villa Gillet. “Une sensational entry onto the choreographic scene”, as we can read on the Numeridanse website, with “a piece that contrasted with the codes of the time.”
Thirty years have passed and Boris Charmatz returns to Lyon where he lived, near Saint-Jean Cathedral. On Sunday morning, flocks of bells carried away everything in their path (including the eardrums of young Boris). “One day I’ll choreograph that”, he said at the time. It’s done with Liberty Cathedral. In this one hour and forty-five hour piece, the dancer attempts to construct “a human church”. For this, he relies on around thirty dancers. Not just any ones.
Reconciliations
Indeed, in August 2022 Boris Charmatz took over as director of Tanztheater Wuppertal, the company created by Pina Bausch in 1973. With the dancers of this ensemble, he wants to develop a Franco-German collaboration by also relying on dancers with whom he has already worked within the framework of [terrain], a project of choreographic experiments “without fixed walls, where the only architecture is human”.
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Liberty Cathedral is structured around several universes: that of voices with the movement of Beethoven. “Designed for the piano, it is complex”, explains Boris Charmatz. We simplified it to sing it in unison.” ; that of touch and contacts, carried by the sounds of the organ, and finally that of the bells whose flights are akin to a great techno party. But the choreographer also wanted to leave room for silence, so present and so palpable in churches. “I would like to bring into existence the thickness of these silences, he saidwhich are also those of the victims (Editor’s note: acts of child abuse in the church)meditation, sleep or the dead body.”
Boris Charmatz, Liberté Cathédrale with the ballet of the Tanztheater Pina Bausch. September 23 at 9:30 p.m. and September 24 at 5:00 p.m. at Usines Fagor, 65 Rue Challemel Lacour, 69007 Lyon – Prices: €16 – €29 – €32
After Lyon, the piece goes on tour:
From April 7 to 18, 2024 – Châtelet Theater in Paris (France)
From December 14 to 19 – Lille Opera in Lille (France)