MOVING BODIES

“Every movement reveals us.” Michel de Montaigne, Essays, book I, chapter 50, 1580

AN AESTHETICS: BODILY AND CONSCIOUS STATES

The medium of the dancer’s body is subjected to constant elaboration, to the novelty of the gesture, to its perpetual reinvention. This body creates movement and it is crossed by it.The muscle is tautened, the momentum follows the breath: it is a concentric circle, down to the blood beating in the arteries, reminding us that the heart is pumping. This is the concept of elastogenesis in its very essence. In my show Vertikal (2018), the dancers are suspended from cables and dance along vertical walls. In my creations, I like to propose a reading that is disconcerting for the gaze and the mind. Here, the artists fly, redrawing a new scenic space that defies the laws of gravity. In this same show, a contortionist makes an imaginary creature emerge before our eyes, like the womansiren in Zéphyr (2021), whose bust alone emerges from a gigantic white veil. The fabric, the drapery, is the wave, the movement of the universe, as is the elasticity of the suspended dancers. It is the wind that lifts the sea, pushes back the sky and the horizon and gives birth to a new cartography. I envisage the forces that run through my creations as beams, as a momentum that emerges and crosses them, like the imagination that follows the contours of the forms, melts into the matter that welcomes it, insinuates itself into the interstices and accompanies their trajectories.

Long before us, Chaplin understood the impact of burlesque introduced into reality. This incongruity that bursts into our horizon is intended to destabilise it, even to demolish it. This mismatch between situations is a variation on our certainties and vanities, and no doubt a way for him to fight against the fear of death and time. In the same way, in my creations, the reading of the body is disrupted or uncomfortable, but it educates the gaze to see further and more broadly. It gives meaning to the language of the body and its power. It is a way of expressing through the body that which is unspeakable: emptiness and fullness, doubt, uncertainty, fragility, commitment...The video in my show Pixel (2014) disrupts our vision, between the projected matter and the physical body. The matter creates the body which creates the matter.There is no longer any easy or obvious alchemy, the gaze subverts it and we are left with the impossible. In this way, consciousness manages to link the elements together and renew the emotions.

A COSMOLOGY:

THE RECREATION OF THE WORLD

I’m always seeking to blur the contours of my art. Sensitivity is often found in that which is uncertain, fragile or out of place. In dance, there is neither void nor chaos, there is the meeting of opposing energies, of tensioned flows. In Pixel, I question the enigma of the world, in a way. How do we inhabit space and find our place? What to do with the enchantment of movement and light so that the human presence is not an insult but a marvellous element amongst the components? The graphic projections in this show sometimes mimic rain, sometimes eruptions, constellations, tree structures... Even before being a question of alchemy, it is a question of discomfort, of conquering space, of resistance. In the same way, when I imagined my show Boxe Boxe (2010), it seemed appropriate to me that the violinists should take their place in the ring and be totally integrated into the space of the stage, just like the viola da gamba in my latest creation Phénix (2022). Incongruity gives rise to the unheard of and the unheard of gives rise to the aesthetic, ethical and philosophical acceptance that something is happening and changing. This is not an innate or intuitive phenomenon, but rather the result of a new orientation of the gaze. And this goes far beyond the aesthetic shock whose blistering effect would leave the spectator stupefied, struck by paralysis or aphasia. The shock

De gauche à droite from left:

Élastogenèse - Velvet Sky Velvet. 2011. Peinture sur velours paint on velvet. 114 x 146 cm. Mourad Merzouki. Pixel. Création 2014. (© Laurent Philippe)

wave, on the contrary, calls for a multitude of responses from each spectator. Rose windows multiplied in 1001 undulations. In my show Folia (2018), the dancers and the singer often seem to be fighting for space. Their grey costumes and pulsating movements contrast with the vocal power of the baroque song of the soloist dressed in red. Until the red and the grey combine to compose a new cosmology, a new song of the world allegorised by the dancer in the white skirt who spins around at the end of the show. Immaculate costume, new pulsation, it is almost hypnotic. The dancer is at the centre of the universe, a new creator who no longer separates the terrestrial and celestial realms, but prefers the circular form, the undulations of a rose window drawn by the movements of his costume. In this finale, dance takes on its purifying virtue. It is a celebration, a pagan epiphany that unites gods and mortals, the sacred song of baroque and hiphop dance. A new Genesis capable of engendering a new world order, a pictorial and visual imbroglio that aspires to splendour by the grace of its blossoming before our eyes.The spectator is invited to close his eyes for a moment, charmed and enchanted by what he sees, and to open them again afterwards, but wider, as if metamorphosed by the experience of beauty. My shows are intentionally rooted in imagination, in another space-time. Also in Folia, the dancers move and dance with globes. This can be seen as a metaphor for creation, where the artist becomes a creator of new worlds. In my shows, the dancers frolic in utopias that could pre-exist the world as well as survive it. In Zéphyr, the dancers defy the elements, swayed and battered by some warring god. Heroic in their struggle, they transcend despair, turning it into a miracle. It is a way of representing the human condition when faced with forces beyond its control. No one knows in the show whether it is the dancers or the wind that have the upper hand. The artists respond to the cosmic force of the elements with the grace of a ballet that becomes a vital force. Heroism emanates from what is changing, vulnerable at times, and I like this reversibility of possibilities. At the end of the show, a woman-siren of gigantic proportions appears, a gorgon or chimera born from the abyss. On the stage, by her immensity, she challenges what the spectator’s eye had integrated at the beginning of the show: minuscule men facing the winds. The spectator’s gaze is constantly subjected to changes in perspective, it is subjected to movement itself. The artist Richard Texier explains this very well in his Manifeste de l’élastogenèse (see pp. I-XXIV of this issue): “Elastogenesis is foremost an elasticity of the imagination, it helps us to approach all possibilities.”

AN ETHICS

“The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.” Michel de Montaigne, Essays, book III, chapter 13, 1580

This phrase by Montaigne invites us to adapt to the order of the world with flexibility, by embracing the vicissitudes of relief, injustice or violence, just like La Fontaine’s reed that bends but does not break. The dancer’s movement is an echo of social movements. It is a back-and-forth between the artist, this other “ego,” and the human condition, of which he is the sublimated projection. He proposes another possibility of existence, more flexible, more fluid. From that point on, the spectator is led to wander himself amidst new references and landmarks. Through this experience, he grows, gains in scope and is ultimately integrated into the great orchestration of the show. He will be able to meet the impalpable elements of the world, zephyrs or pixels, boxers and violinists, dancers who fly and climb vertical walls. Beyond artistic creation, my ambition is to educate the gaze, to make dance a school for the spectator. This flexibility is a response to society when it is destabilised or flawed. The beam of breath embodied by the dancers appears as a forging energy, but stripped of its titanic force, it calls for wonder without clashes or violence. It is a state of being in the world, an elastogenesis, this theory that inspires my work and my journey.Thus, I move forward with grace and energy in this space that is offered to me, the theatre of the world and the city, where everything is movement. Like the trickle of water seeping between rock and ice, I choose what runs and embrace the rough edges to better melt into them. The stream knows only the slope and the fall, inevitably and by the physical law of gravity, yet miraculously it regains a relationship with the world in the twisted line it draws on the mountain. Such is its rebirth and its ability to reinvent itself, even though it was born from the chaos of the elements, from the tutelary power of the rocks and minerals, from the melting of the snow and the vertigo of the waterfall. My creative work is often based on the desire to erase the construction line, to merge bodies and light, bodies and objects, the dancer and the wind, just as water, seemingly subjected to the elements that collide with it, becomes a work of art through the detours it takes. One form erases another to give birth to something new. In this way, we can envisage the reorientation of our view of intolerance, discrimination and rejection. Poetry and beauty are the answers to the divisions and turbulence of society because they are new possible forms of writing and language. I will always take my strength from that which is hollow, battered or irregular and turn it into an arabesque. Such is my energy, my vitality, my awareness of the world and of the role I must play in it.

Mourad Merzouki is a French dancer and choreographer of hip-hop and contemporary dance. He directs the Käfig company. He created the Karavel festival in Lyon and the Kalypso festival in the Île-de-France region. He was the director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne (20092022).