“Hervé Robbe created three choreographies under the generic title of V.O.: the first for his company Le Marietta Secret in March 1996, the second for the A.T.M. Dance Company in Mito (Japan) in June 1996. A third American volume was added in April 1997. V.O. Brest and V.O. US are performed here in front of an audience. 
What does dance mean to you? This is the question that Hervé Robbe posed to around fifty people living in different cities around the world: Brest, Mito and New York. Their ages and position in society were diverse: New York business man, Breton rapper, pupil from a classical dance school, sailor and Kabuki dancer.  As an ad hoc chronicler, Hervé Robbe elicited intimate statements which lean at times towards a more intellectualised discourse on the body. From these accounts, Cécile Le Pardo extracted the material which makes up the supporting soundtrack for the three parts of V.O.: V.O. Brest, V.O. Mito and V.O. US.
The participation of the interviewees does not end at the “capture” of their voices; they are present on stage via photographic images. The portraits are each installed on a support that the dancers move around and they structure the space for the French part in a quasi-geometrical way. The Japanese are grouped in the same photograph, symbolising their social cohesion. Far from suggesting that the choreographer and stage designer intended to set up a paradigm of each culture; the display is never peremptory: there are outbursts of emotion and a multitude of points of view…The conjunction of language and physical expression puts side by side everyday practice and the exemplary nature of an artistic practice. The switching back and forth between these two modes of expression keeps the audience's attention on the move. It disorients them. These two dynamic expressions contrast with the fixedness of the portraits.
Moving beyond boundaries to plunge into other reference systems, associating amateur and artist, are different ways to facilitate an encounter, to be caught up in a contemporary story of bodies. Far from any approach which aims to globalise the contents, this work simply invites one to listen sensitively and be carried along by the diversity of the ideas. It leaves the impression that the experiment could continue.”

Source : Extrait d'un texte d'Irène Filiberti - Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre Haute-Normandie

Credits

Chorégraphie Hervé Robbe création sonore Cécile le Prado lumière Yves Godin conseillère artistique pour les costumes Kazue Naito réalisation vidéo Aldo Lee assisté de Benoit Lanceleur
Coproduction le Quartz de Brest, le Marietta Secret, la Fondation Paribas

Filmé au Quartz de Brest en 1997

Born in Lille in 1961. After studying architecture for a few years, Hervé Robbe set his sights on dance. He was principally trained at Mudra, Maurice Béjart's school in Brussels. He began his performing career dancing the neo-classical repertoire, then went on to work with various modern dance makers.

In 1987 he founded his company: le Marietta secret.

The course of his career is clearly founded on a constant renewal of his choreographic writing. Supported by loyal artistic collaborators, his work has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, associating the dance presence with visual, sound and technological worlds. His projects, polysemic works, take many forms: frontal performance, ambulatory shows and installations.

The place of the audience, its presence and view is decisive; the stage space is regularly called into question.

His arrival at the CCN (National choreographic Centre) of Le Havre Haute-Normandie offered more opportunities for his research.

In 1999 he composed his autobiographical solo Polaroïd. Within it, video images of places associated with his childhood appear and coexist with an uninterrupted physical display.

In 2000 he explored the theme of home with Permis de construire – Avis de Démolition, a diptych consisting of an installation and a performance. He went on to tackle the theme of the garden in 2002 with Des Horizons Perdus.

In a world constructed with screens – virtual containers for the body, evokers of death – in the duet REW he engaged in a dialogue between man and woman on the theme of suicide. In 2004, with the group piece Mutating Score, he returned to the idea of the performance area being a common space occupied by both audience and dancers. This installation-dance, while reaffirming this conviction about the force of movement, marks the culmination of a project on the use of new technologies, which are integrated into the show in real time.

In 2006 he designed the installation So long as baby...love and songs will be, a kind of manifesto of the preoccupations which underlie his work. The device is a containing structure in which the audience is invited to watch and listen to the dancer-singers present on screen. Hervé Robbe distanced himself from the stage with this, then returned to it in the works Là, on y danse in 2007 and Next days in 2010.

While maintaining his personal approach in his own productions, he regularly accepts commissions from the Opéra de Lyon, the Gulbenkian Ballet, the CNSMDP (Paris Conservatoire) and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Source: Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre Haute-Normandie

Aldo Lee has studied at the University of Witwatersand (South Africa) where he is received as Bachelor of Art, with the highest distinction, in 1989. In 1995, he takes part in the International Video Workshop for Dance (Glasgow). He moves to fiction with Sacrifice (drama, 30 mn) for which he is awarded the best short-movie prize at the South African Cinema festival. He directs several documentary films and is awarded the prizes for best documentary for La double vie de Dona Ermelinda (The Double Life of Dona Ermelinda, 52 mn) at the festival Vues d'Afrique, Montréal in 1995 ; and in 1999, for Fermiers Blancs, Terre Noire (White Farmers, Black Land, 52 mn) at the festival of the Dhow Countries, Tanzania.

He collaborates notably with artists Rainer Ganahl, Boris Achour, Yann Kopp, and particularly choreographers Hervé Robbe, Jérôme Bel, Rachid Ouramdane... For the association edna, he co-directs Horace-Benedict in 2001 with Dimitri Chamblas and collaborates with Boris Charmatz for his film Une lente introduction (A Slow Introduction, 2007). In parallel, he works regularly as cameraman and director for various projects broadcasted on Arte, France3 (Striptease) or Channel Four.