by Frédéric and Garance
1995. On stage, a naked woman exposes her intimacy and flesh as material to be explored. At the performance of Jérôme Bel’s eponymous play, the critic and journalist Dominique Buffard, without a doubt disoriented by what she saw, described this work as “non-danse“. Although Orazio Massaro was considered as the precursor of this movement in 1990, it was in the early 2000s that a trend began to emerge: in several dance performances, or at least those labelled as such, there was little or no dance.
“No to gratuitous gesture! No to scenery! No to costumes! No lighting effects!” These principles laid down by dancer and choreographer Boris Charmatz were applied on French stages in the works of Alain Buffard (Good Boy, 1998), Christian Rizzo (100% Polyester, objet dansant n°(à définir)) and Maguy Marin (Turba, 2007).
Most non-dance choreographers were performers in the eighties, the period of La Nouvelle Danse Française, also known as Jeune Danse Française. La Nouvelle Danse Française sought to break free from the codes of both modern and classical dance, and while it was based on an egalitarian approach, it also encouraged the singularity of its creators.
In 1981, Jack Lang, a theater man, was appointed Minister of Culture by François Mitterrand. The government was banking on choreographic development to help French talents emerge. The French government then starts a policy of decentralisation and Jack Lang creates institutions to facilitate creation all over the territory. Choreographers received their first grants and made experiments. This marked the emergence of the Centres Chorégraphiques Nationaux (CCN), run by French artists who wanted to move towards a model of equality in social relations. This was the beginning of what is known as contemporary dance, a dance offering a sensitive experience for both performers and spectators.
Unfortunately, this institutionalisation of art created a new academicism. The choreographers of La Nouvelle Danse Française had shaped their repertoire and by the end of the nineties their dancers rebeled.
Non-dance is rooted in this process of rebellion, pushing the choreographer’s thoughts to the point of developing creations in which dance movement disappears. Theatre, literature, visual arts, music, video, film, projections- the subject is no longer dance but the body. The body becomes fundamental in its own right. It is no longer just a tool to be mastered, but a medium through which a form of presence is expressed. Movement is becoming rarer, resisting the projection, dynamism and bodily expressiveness that were over-emphasised in the eighties. More intimate, more sensitive, bodies move less and space is emptied to question the very need to dance.
By re-evaluating the very notion of dance and placing the presence or disappearance of the body at the heart of their experiments, artists have helped to change the contemporary choreographic landscape. Dance performances in which the creative process is at work are less confusing for audiences in the venues where they are performed. Hybrid forms of performances begin to appear in theatre programmings.
The authors behind this shift have in fact not given up on dance. Thanks to their research and reflections, they have imposed new methods of creation. By questioning the parameters of dance shows, they have brought choreographic works closer to visual installations or performative theater. The dancers’ bodies are freed from the demands of movement conditioned by the performance. Gestures no longer necessarily emanate from the choreographer alone, the brilliant creator above the dancers. By shaking up the codes, choreographers have also imposed the idea that a performance is not an object that spectators watch passively: in a generous, if sometimes radical, approach, they have invited spectators to broaden their perception of a play and to participate in it.
Above all, choreographers have continued to tell human stories through and with dance, and to make choreographic art more than ever in touch with the world. And French contemporary dance, following the example of Yvonne Rainer who brought American contemporary dance into the postmodern period with the No Manifesto in 1964, has made its own revolution.
Sources:
Articles
CAIRN, « « Non-danse » déconstructions postmodernes »: « Non-danse » déconstructions postmodernes | Cairn.info
Introducing Orazio Massaro, non-dance precursor : Orazio Massaro
Centre Pompidou « Danse ou non-danse : par où la danse ? »: 6. Danse ou non-danse: par où la danse?
Le Monde, article by Rosita Boisseau- April 25 2009 : Dans beaucoup de spectacles de danse, on ne danse plus
Books
Danse et non-danse, vingt-cinq ans d’histoires by Dominique Frétard, Édition Cercle d’Art, 2004.
Videos
The “Nouvelle Danse Française” of the 1980s| Numeridanse tv
https://www.numeridanse.tv/videotheque-danse/retrospective-1996?s
https://www.numeridanse.tv/videotheque-danse/retrospective-2001?s