2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013

1. A.I.R. CURRENTS
2. "THE WAR WITHOUT A NAME"
3. PAUL RICARD 1909 - 1997
4. MARSEILLE : Radio Grenouille & Euphonia

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1. AIR CURRENTS

Courants d'A.I.R., a project for an Independent Resident Artist linked to the CNCDC at Châteauvallon, directed by Christian Tamet, responds to this desire for lightness and freedom. Today, for the type of creation I have in mind, I don't need a specific location or permanent dancers. I don't settle down. More. Regularly, but never for very long. It's important to breathe the air of the South, to keep on discovering and to remain in a certain vagueness before acting.

Today, I'm a dancer-choreographer-choreographer.

What I really want to do is to organize and carry out sound, visual and gestural collections. The team I'd like to assemble from now on is a casual and committed one, made up mainly of sound recordists, musicians, storytellers, people who work with light, image captors.
I'm looking to track down the words, looks and gestures of people from the South, on both sides of the Mediterranean. On both sides. To hear other sounds. Other accents, other languages. Other spaces. Other bodies in motion.
Of those who live there, those who work there, those who talk there, those who dream there, those who walk there, those who grumble there, those who tinker there...

Relate, articulate, conjugate...

Choreographic art!

It never takes long for a dancer to forge, cultivate and share links. Armed with this empirical knowledge, we are highly effective at organizing and bringing to fruition actions and events.
To present the results of these adventures, I'm delighted to imagine venues other than theaters and other performance conditions as opportunities to question the relationship with an unformatted audience.

Courants d'A.I.R. continues to explore the notion of independence. Three to four months of research, encounters and collections are carried out each year, resulting in radio creations, documentaries and films, writings, music and danced gestures presented at public events.
The project is itinerant and travels to both shores of the Mediterranean, not only in France, but also in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

2. "THE WAR WITHOUT A NAME

Courants d'A.I.R. is designed to run for 4 years: 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
In 2013, the artistic results of the previous 3 years will be created in a spectacular, vernacular and unprecedented form: "LA GUERRE SANS NOM", a dance - sound - light - image installation that will draw on all the artistic and human supports generated by encounters or by the strength of the site. "LA GUERRE SANS NOM", a project supported by Cornucopiae and the CNCDC at Châteauvallon, aims to be part of the Marseille - Provence 2013 program.
What is significant about the tragedy of Algeria's war of independence is the silence that covers it, and which still lasts after almost 50 years. Yet 50 years is the time it takes for historians to come to grips with this human folly. Both the French and the Algerians still bear the scars of THE NAMELESS WAR.
Having conducted the first series of interviews on this buried memory for INDEPENDANCE n°1 from September 2009 to April 2010, and having visited the Aurès in May 2010, I must continue to listen and have others listen in return. The people who agreed to testify were born in the 1930s/1940s. I intend to develop a second session with people born around 60/70. These multiple, complementary, paradoxical or, on the contrary, convergent words force me to reflect, to open up to what I don't know. I'm aware of the profound change this investigative work has brought about in my imagination and perception of reality. It changes the way I look at myself and others. For example, I thought I had a lot of tolerance, but now I realize that I have a long way to go on this subject. That nothing can ever be taken for granted. That each new experience uncovers unknown aspects of our nature.
I'm amazed that so few of us in the performing arts are interested in the tragedy of the Algerian war. I've read Camus and books by historians, seen documentaries and films d'auteur, attended plays, but never dance. Yet the body in movement is the ideal instrument for evoking the strange ambiguity of men's and women's behavior in wartime.

I'm as slow as a tortoise, so it's going to take me a long time to travel this impossible path of reflection and creation on independence. A long journey on which I hope to make essential encounters that will enable me to lay down, like milestones, jewels of sound, visual and gestural creation.

In this context, I'd like to collaborate with an Algerian director, Tariq Teguia, whose cinematographic work "Inland" (2008) recently blew me away, suspended me, made me feel as joyful as when you've just seen something rare and good. I'm in contact with him and hope to convince him to do something together. To be continued...

3. PAUL RICARD 1909-1997

I can't reasonably explain my attraction to the personality and life of Paul Ricard. I don't understand why I'm so intrigued by this man's approach and journey. To try and explain it, I can always try the hackneyed cliché of the pieds-noirs sitting down to a kémia with an anisette.... No, that's not it. Or highlight the insane quest to reproduce the taste of the very first Ricard drink. No, that's not good enough.
I'm not an intellectual, I think with my whole body, not just my head. A kind of animal, who smells to discover and move forward. Intuition and observation are my partners. I'm able to stay a long time refining a detail without tiring, with passion, without seeing time go by. Intuition isn't infallible, far from it, when it comes to the accuracy of the paths it leads us down. I'm well aware of that. Getting lost is secondary, because in the end, all paths are equal.

Follow in the footsteps of Paul Ricard.

I've only visited two Ricard sites so far: the laboratory and first factory (now a warehouse) at Sainte-Marthe in Marseille, a place symbolic of the beginnings of the Ricard adventure. And the Production Center in Bordeaux, because it's close to La Rochelle, where I still live. For this second meeting, I was accompanied by Nicolas Barillot, the sound man, and João Garcia, the photographer. Each time, I was moved by the warmth and simplicity of their welcome. That this man was able to pass on such essential energy, and that it lives on after him. It reminds me of the oral transmission we dancers have. And also, how the power of a gesture or a dance is always generated by the small, the close to nothing. It makes you think of the impact of thought and intention, to be at the heart of gestures that delight the imagination.

I'd like to continue visiting the places that marked Paul Ricard's professional life, such as the La Margeray estate and the apartments created for the company's employees, the Méjanes estate in Carmargue, the island of Bendor, the Observatoire de la mer on the island of Les Embiez, the commune of Signes where he was mayor and the thebaide on the Tête-de-l'Evèque peak. All the places he chose are remarkable both aesthetically and symbolically, reflecting the singular, avant-garde personality of a visionary man.

At the heart of the Cap au Sud - Sud! adventure, I'm going to dive into the amazing squint of pastis on contact with water... to see less clearly!!!

4. MARSEILLE: Radio Grenouille & Euphonia

I remember the incredible advent of free radio in the 80s, its impact and creativity. I remember that their emergence had a strong influence on our sound environment and that, for example, one of my pieces Grand Écart had as its soundtrack a sound creation inspired by Radio Nova, the free and trendy radio of the time.
In the balance I seek between image and sound, in the personal evolution that leads me to take into consideration the strength of oral transmission, sound and its artistic developments are at the very forefront of my way of working.
Putting forward and privileging the finesse of the ear is as important as knowing how to see. The eye and the ear must go together and interact. Since the beginning of my career in dance, I have been accompanied by the crème de la crème of sound engineers in the performing arts, and I am fortunate to have learned from the best.
Whether in everyday life or on stage, the world of sound is a subtle and powerful partner. It touches the imagination directly, and for this reason, it's a precious element that accompanies and stimulates the space of thought. When I dance, sound is an indispensable partner that opens up unpredictable paths to experimentation in the present.
Radio broadcasting is a priority medium to develop in order to bear witness to the multiple collections that we make at Cornucopiae with Nicolas Barillot.
On every trip we make, whether to Algeria, New Caledonia, Paul Ricard's home or Marseilles, we record words, sounds, urban or rural landscapes, collecting, sorting and storing all the audio memories of our various peregrinations.
In Marseilles, I met and visited the team behind the famous Radio Grenouille and the Euphonia sound creation studio. We are in the process of imagining a common space for radio creations, which should bring its first productions around LA GUERRE SANS NOM.
Sound meetings will be invented in association with other radio stations:
- with RFI in the person of Pascale Paradou - Culture Vive, which would like to accompany the various travels occasioned by Courant d'A.I.R. and the South Pacific project in New Caledonia.
- with the Ateliers de Création Radiophonique on France Culture, led by Frank Smith.

Another dimension of Nicolas Barillot's work with Cornucopiae is the regular recording of the musical work of Gianni Fornet, a guitarist who has been accompanying my creative work since 2004. The meeting with Moïse Kuiesine, a musician from Wetr in Lifou, and the discovery of Kanak songs, will give rise to a new register of collections and new opportunities for musical creation, to be disseminated.