dance on paper

I came across an interview with French choreographer Olivier Dubois in Mouvement magazine where he talks about reinterpreting the legendary dancer’s work, The Afternoon of a Fawn. Dubois has some interesting things to say, so I have translated the interview below. Conducted by Gwenola David, July-Sept. issue, 2008. (note on the translation: when I say “dancer”, I have translated from “interprète” which literally means interpreter, but equally dancer in the context of choreography. I mention this because Dubois touches on ideas about interpreting, and in French the word is essential. Also, I have put into boldface those comments I found particularly interesting)

“MUTATIONS OF A FAUNE”

Olivier Dubois, an unusual dancer, makes an abstraction out of his corpulence and reflects on the interpretation of choreography. For Faune(s), he calls on Christophe Honore, Sophie Perez and Xavier Boussiron so he can “deviate from the known paths”.

May 29th, 1912, Theatre du Chatelet, Paris. L’après midi d’un faune abruptly overturns choreographic conventions. Vaslav Nijinski, the herald of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, broke away from proper academic codes and shattered the glorious icon of the virtuoso soloist. About a century later and following many other artists, Olivier Dubois attacks the myth with the respect of an iconoclast passionate about history. An uncommon dancer of insolent roundness and indulgent suppleness, he undertakes a revival of the Fawn, placing the original score under the baton of Dominique Brun. But since he intends to question notions of the dancer and of updating an existing work, he has also asked Christophe Honoré, filmmaker and writer, Sophie Perez, director and scenographer, and Xavier Boussiron, composer, to imagine their own visions. To which he will add his own. Faune(s) will be a very plural interpretation…

Why did you start dance at age 23?

I don’t really know. I had taken a few classes before, without much desire or follow-up, just as I had done a lot of sports: tennis, horseback riding, judo, karate, Thai boxing… Professionally I saw myself in some sort of diplomatic career, like a cultural attaché. I studied applied foreign languages in Aix-en-Provence and had prepared the Inalco exam. Except that college didn’t fit me at all, neither did the rythym, the people. I reached saturation. Long story short, after my degree, I wanted to explore something else… dance for example. I love a challenge. I’m someone who always tries things. After tons of negotiations with my parents who thoroughly objected (I didn’t have the physique, the technique nor the experience), I went to Paris for a trial year. There I devoured dance. I took up to four classes a day, from ballet to modern, read books, studies, went to shows… in order to make up for lost time, to acquire the vocabulary, to make myself into an intelligent body, to be able to adapt myself to choreographer’s propositions. At the end of one year, I had my dancer’s “costume” et could make a difference at auditions. My great chance was to debut with Damiano Foa and Loura Simi, of the company Silenda. They made me understand what it means to be a dancer, in terms of engagement and of responsibility. And they allowed me to work towards authenticity in my movement and the motivation to take on this career.

Did anyone ever question you because of your body, different because of its roundness?

I had never questioned myself beforehand. At one time I believed it was my difference that explained why they always chose the other guy in the final round of auditions. In reality, I simply wasn’t ready. I learned that with Karine Saporta. I dance with an almost fantasized image of my body -with sensations of movement. If I visualize something, I prevent myself from exploring that place where the supposed physical norms don’t correspond, that place where I don’t expect. Even so, my stance doesn’t mean to bring up a militant discourse. My body is simply my working tool. I know that it doesn’t “conform” because people’s regards tell me so. Like Angelin Preljocaj, who told me one day, “The day your body poses a problem for you, it will be my problem too. Because you’ll dance differently.”

You have danced for Karine Saporta, Angelin Preljocaj, Jan Fabre, Nasser Martin-Gousset among others, then took a detour with Cirque de Soliel, then in Las Vegas for Celine Dion’s concert. Why such diversity?

I’m bulemic. I love to learn, to subject myself to new rules. I love to get lost. These experiences were also fields of exploration. With Angelin Preljocaj for example, I learned to be interchangeable, to dance in a group. In Las Vegas, I discovered American-style productions, I learned to sing, to do acrobatics. I went to the audition to accompany a friend, and then I sort of fell into it. In the end I got myself kicked out… I took up too much space on stage. With Jan Fabre, I loved the generosity of the information and whom I met, the combat, the audacity, the engagement, the sense of live directing, which was worth all the pain I endured and the frantic speed. He does a lot to artistically nourish the dancer. He shares his artistic friendships. We dined with Nan Goldin, Matthew Barney, Marina Abramovic, Björk… I’m serving the work, not of the choreographer. Even if we aren’t equal, because he remains my employer- in front of the art, we work together. This focus on the same goal -creation- balances the relationship.

Is that the question of the dancer/interpreter?

This diversity allows me to enrich myself, to be a force of proposition, to dare extreme contortions. Actually, the problem of a dancer/interpreter goes along with that of translation, which I loved in college: this painful space of perpetual dissatisfaction, of contortion in order to get inside the shell of the work and try to hold it up. Interpretation, it’s the “almost” -to use an expression by Umberto Eco in Dire presque la meme chose- in other words, the selected portion that’s not totally satisfying.

“To bend, to submit oneself and above all to pervert in order for the work to exist”, you write. Is this your definition of a dancer’s gesture?

A gesture contains an intrinsic duplicity. I try to make my body malleable, available, but it isn’t a virgin body. It’s loaded with lived experiences. Like a novel that enriches itself with new words every day -where I delve in to write another book. What I am largely perverts what’s asked of me, since the vector, being me, is my body, my experience, my doubts, my audacities, my imperfections. A dancer is a physical thinker. I don’t exactly follow the steps, I deviate slightly and with conviction, but always in the service of the work.

You have applied to be the director of Centre Choregraphique National de Rennes et de Bretagne. You place the dancer at the heart of your project…

In France, recognition unfortunately comes through institutions. My project aimed to create a place of reflection within the choreographic landscape, and a true platform for dancers, offering resources over a duration of time. The nature of a dancer’s problems isn’t only viewed in terms of training. Why am I the first [dancer] to propose directing a national choreographic center?

In Faune(s), you approach L’Apres-midi d’un faune as an auteur, but above all as a dancer. What is your point of view?

I have a feeling that Nijinski created L’Apres-midi d’un faune as a dancer. The piece didn’t provoke a scandal because of its eroticism but because the handsome virtuoso dancer, transformed into a woodland creature, didn’t respond to the public’s expectations. Faune corresponds to this historical moment when the dancer becomes the choreographer. What interests me is to approach it as a dancer, to traverse the original work in its scenery, with a painted canvas by Bakst, the nymphs, etc. My goal isn’t to dance Nijinski, but rather the Faune, to forget my costume and my shapely form, to disappear behind the work. The error would be that people saw Olivier Dubois. It’s a really complex and subtle challenge.

How have you proceeded with the work?

I worked with Dominique Brun, one of the founders of the Knust Quartet, who has worked on a transcription of this work for many years. She passed on her knowledge and the score to me, in total fidelity, but not in an old-fashioned way. I root myself in history so that I can free myself from it. The question of the dancer and of the reappropriation of heritage is at the heart of the project. Similarly, I asked filmmaker Christophe Honoré, Sophie Perez and Xavier Boussiron to create their own vision while respecting the original’s format, to know the theme, the music and the one same dancer. Cinema interests me as an art of “living dead objects”, which is to say, that which brings forth the fiction of life all while freezing it, therefore killing it on the film, in order to replay it semi-eternally. As for Sophie Perez, I love her way of subverting theater, to draw from history, to dredge up both the sublime and the messy, to rub the trivial and the intellectual together. She rummaged through Nijinsky’s writings, his biography -notably his relations with Diaghilev, his mother, his wife, etc. Then she thought up objects that I improvised with in order to compose a portrait… a subjective one. I wished to confront myself with artists with whom I had never worked, in order to deviate from the known paths.

You have just finished the forth version of Faune(s). What’s next?

The forth version reproduces the experience of this journey. In other words, how the passing through the three preceding versions nourishes the dancer… The superposition ends by erasing Olivier Dubois dancing Nijinsky -so that the Faune can appear in the foreground.