François Chaignaud presents a programme of short pieces, reconnecting with the tradition of the salon recital – an event that played a major role in the advent of the choreographic modernity of the 20th century. Based on a contemporary repertoire of the contemplative undulation of the Water Lilies, he imagines a recital around the work of Isadora Duncan, whom he studied with Elisabeth Schwartz since 2015.

“This miniature recital is a revelation of the reality and strangeness of these bodies and voices which, in the first third of the 20^th century – Frightened and fascinated by a world plagued by new metamorphoses –, dreamed of recapturing an intensity of their own. This paradoxical dream, torn between the nostalgia of a vanished world, the illusion of returning to a state of fantasised nature, and a passion for travel, is a chance for a body, weakened by melancholy and modern life, to affirm its sensual and sexual power. Immersing oneself in these elusive dances is, I find, a study of a repertoire and a history (and of the way in which the choreographic and expressive forms adopted by Isadora Duncan exude an era, a place, a mental, poetic and ideological landscape), as well as a salutary interrogation of our contemporary form of creation and dance. Isadora Duncan dazzles our blind spots.”

François Chaignaud

CREATION TEAM

Choreography, performance and singing François Chaignaud

Transmission of the dances Elisabeth Schwartz

Piano Adriano Spampanato / Romain Louveau

Costumes Romain Brau

Administration, production Mandorle productions

With the help from Fondation Louis Vuitton, Musée de l’Orangerie, Miroirs Étendus, La Brèche Festival, la Ménagerie de Verre.