Bruno Sajous and Frédéric Werlé set themselves the target of “creating a beautiful show”. A show with video, costumes, scenery, accessories, coloured lights and sequins. With dance, singing, images and words. And, above all, with two characters who meet each other, help each other out and complement each other. Bruno Sajous has an excellent sense of movement; he is the incarnation of the contemporary dancer focused on the art of “motion” – a term which was very important to Alwin Nikolais (with whom Bruno Sajous worked) – and which refers to the quality of a gesture.

Frédéric Werlé “likes frenzies”, humour and Don Quixote. His performances are characterized by instances of opening up to his audience and then keeping them at a distance.

“In 1 zeste 2, each dancer uses one universe in order to create a third, each dancer opens up to new types of behaviour, all the while retaining his autonomy”, the choreographers explain.

With the pretext of telling the story of a dancer who is looking for a way to express himself, the two friends enter into a ping-pong process – they seek each other, stimulate one another, defy each other and, sometimes, size each other up.

Their closeness in their work and on stage is born of their confidence in that which distinguishes each one from the other. In this way, the competition becomes a piece of theatrical machinery which the dancers make fun of.

Bruno Sajous and Frédéric Werlé make every effort to put forward “their” beautiful performance by devoting themselves to odds and ends, by making the images go off the rails and by turning their own relationship with performance upside down. They refer to the field of choreography in a tongue-in-cheek way, giving a wink and tripping it up. They go from an exemplary demonstration of dance to a ridiculous variation about animals; from an eccentric duel to an educational interlude which is both humorous and technical.

Made up of multiple playlets and daring to make jokes, “1 zeste 2” alternates between affirmation and doubt, between observation and spontaneity, between the natural and the artificial. Venturing into all scenes with their sincerity, the two choreographers question their own vision of the choreographic performance by peppering it with semi-failures, turnarounds, surreal images and unfinished journeys.

On stage, they invest the quality of the relationships created by the work which went into drawing up and rehearsing the piece, and nurture it with a tenderness which is not without modesty.

This choreographic experiment is intended to be “quite simply human», therefore it distances itself from questioning on an aesthetic level and on the dimension of the performance. It exposes the two dancers to the vulnerability of a moment which is being played out on stage. It presents the staging of the desire to perform.

Geisha Fontaine

Updating: March 2010

Sajous took his first steps in jazz dance at the American Center in Paris, and his first steps in modern dance in New York, during three years at the school of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis. Nikolais took him on into the junior company and invited him as a soloist to dance his choreography “Segue”. During the course of these years, he met Bill T. Jones, with whom he worked on the choreography of “Promised Land”. After having returned to Paris, he performed at the Olympic Games in Albertville staged by Philippe Decouflé, before beginning to teach after obtaining his state diploma in teaching contemporary dance. He also worked with the choreographer Serge Ricci. He then founded his own company, Incanto, for which he choreographed pieces which remain little known.

Last update : January 2011

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).