Joule - in situ, choreographic stroll through the abbey
Forget the screens for a moment! Choreographer and videographer Doria Belanger made herself known during a Nuit blanche in Paris, with her filmed portraits of dancers, entitled Donnez-moi-moi. With Joule, she then proposed a video installation that juxtaposed two screens, one broadcasting images of energy-producing installations (wind turbines, nuclear power plants, etc.), the other showing her performers operating in fragile or threatened natural spaces. In Royaumont, the dance escapes, it escapes the televisions to walk the gardens, inhabit the cloister or revive the ruins. In solo, duet, trio or quartet, the troupe of dancers takes up the choreographer’s meditation. Each scene is dedicated to a particular source of energy, the highlight being a painting dedicated to electricity itself. By embodying through dance the notions of strength, power, gushing, scarcity or toxicity, Joule - in situ makes our relationship with fossil, nuclear and renewable energies dangle. At a time when oil and gas remind us of their scarcity, wandering gives us to see forces that usually remain invisible and mysterious. Yet they are at hand, hidden in the human body. By showing it radiantly solar, fleshly terrestrial or poetically aerial, Doria Belanger reminds us that it is the best of engines.