Catherine Diverrès : summer quarters at the CNDC, A,gers, 1986

The CNDC in Angers is a training centre. Its working spaces and accommodation are deserted with the arrival of summer. In 1985, director Michel Reilhac made them available to emerging dance companies. On one condition: there was to be a public performance of the work in progress. Catherine Diverrès took advantage of this arrangement in the summer of ‘86. She put the finishing touches to her piece “L'arbitre des Elegances”. The extract chosen here shows a duet between Thierry Baë and Marie-Hélène Mortureux, followed by a solo by Bernardo Montet, with whom Catherine Diverrès shares, at the head of the Studio DM Company, the development of an already highly-skilled choreography. An easy theatricality draws upon a torn interiority, where a space of upheaval is hollowed out. Its motifs show themselves in palpitation, anarchic force, outbursts or setting up of symbols. This bitter dance connects the body to disturbing memories, buried feelings, in a composition that is not afraid of halts, feverish energy, interruptions or losing control. Here, nothing is linear.

Gérard Mayen

Credits

enregistré le 17 juillet 1986 dans les studios Bodinier du CNDC

chorégraphie Catherine Diverrès

interprétation Marion Baë, Thierry Baë, Bernardo Montet

production CNDC Angers

Catherine Diverrès has said, “Conscience, our relationship with others, this is what creates time”, ever since her first choreographic creation. She is a sort of strange meteor, appearing in the landscape of contemporary dance in the mid-80’s. She stood out almost immediately in her rejection of the tenets of post-modern American dance and the classically-based vocabularies trending at that time. She trained at the Mudra School in Brussels under the direction of Maurice Béjart, and studied the techniques of José Limón, Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais before joining the company of Dominique Bagouet in Montpellier, then deciding to set out on her own choreographic journey.

Her first work was an iconic duo, Instance, with Bernardo Montet, based upon a study trip she took to Japan in 1983, during which she worked with one of the great masters of butoh, Kazuo Ohno. This marked the beginning of the Studio DM. Ten years later she was appointed director of the National Choreographic Center in Rennes, which she directed until 2008.

Over the years, Catherine Diverrès has created over thirty pieces, created her own dance language, an extreme and powerful dance, resonating with the great changes in life, entering into dialogues with the poets: Rilke, Pasolini and Holderlin, reflecting alongside the philosophers Wladimir Jankelevich and Jean-Luc Nancy, focusing also on the transmission of movement and repertoire in Echos, Stances and Solides and destabilising her own dancing with the help of the plastician Anish Kapoor in L’ombre du ciel.

Beginning in 2000, she began adapting her own style of dance by conceiving other structures for her creations: she improvised with the music in Blowin, developed projects based on experiences abroad, in Sicily for Cantieri, and with Spanish artists in La maison du sourd. Exploring the quality of stage presence, gravity, hallucinated images, suspensions, falls and flight — the choreographer began using her own dance as a means of revealing, revelation, unmasking, for example in Encor, in which movements and historical periods are presented. Diverrès works with the body to explore the important social and aesthetic changes of today, or to examine memory, the way she did in her recent solo in homage to Kazuo Ohno, O Sensei.

And now the cycle is repeating, opening on a new period of creation with the founding of Diverrès’ new company, Association d’Octobre, and the implantation of the company in the city of Vannes in Brittany. Continuing on her chosen path of creation and transmission, the choreographer and her dancers have taken on a legendary figure, Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons, in Penthésilée(s). In returning to group and collective work, this new work is indeed another step forward in the choreographer’s continuing artistic journey.

Source: Irène Filiberti, website of the company Catherine Diverrès

More information: compagnie-catherine-diverres.com