In this piece Christian and François Ben Aïm attempt to explore desire, the source of powerful forces, a boundless energy that continually pushes the body to move in an inordinate quest towards an inaccessible goal. Conceived as the driving force of the performers on stage, it breathes life into them, giving each movement a spontaneous sense of urgency that is by turn creative or destructive.
What state does our perpetual yearning plunge us into ?
How does desire interfere with our gestures and movements?
What relationships does it prompt us to form with others?
Are we thinking puppets in an unconscious or invisible world?

La légèreté des tempêtes (Lightness of storms) analyses the states into which the beings around us are plunged by their irrational appetites.

THE MUSIC: ANOTHER CHARACTER IN THE PIECE

The music plays a central role in this piece, because the musicians appear on stage with the dancers, and the set design puts them at the forefront.

The choreographers commissioned composer Jean-Baptiste Sabiani to write an original score, which is performed on stage by a contemporary group of three cellists and a singer-percussionist. La légèreté des tempêtes is the fourth composition Jean-Baptiste Sabiani has created for Christian and François Ben Aïm. For the first time, they asked the composer to write the score before the rehearsals. This meant they had to adopt a new approach that involved writing the choreography based on the music.

A CONVULSIVE DANCE

Christian and François Ben Aïm explore the frontiers of desire through a precise, convulsive style of writing that manifests as a succession of sensations and resonances, consisting of rupture, urgency and grace, leading to states of suspense and swirling, resistance and release, chaos and calm. 

The performers are gripped, sometimes involuntarily, by states, emotions and impulses that overtake them and that they can see working inside them. It doesn’t matter whether these states are joyous, serious or distressing – the dancers observe the reactions they arouse in them with the same interest, simply for the pleasure of the experience. 

Through the prism of these contrasts, the choreographers create an insightful map of the world that surrounds us, and experience its harsh realities on our bodies, thoughts and feelings.  

For more than twenty years, Christian and François BEN AÏM have been building a work rich of poetry and high standards, fraternal bond and singularity.

At the end of a multidisciplinary training combining dance, physical theater and circus, each one follows his path as a performer, then the two brothers meet to create À l’abri du regard des hommes, avant d’aller mourir ailleurs, a hybrid dance-theater piece which marks the beginning of their collaboration in 1997. Twenty pieces will follow which anchor their fieldwork as much as they travel internationally. They draw their inspiration from literary, musical and pictorial sources, and intimately mixing artistic disciplines on the stage : En plein coeur (2006), Valse (2010), The Ogresse on archives and her dog (2011), Lightness of Storms (2014), Burn, rebellious hearts (2017), Mirages — boreal souls (2018), Arise (2019), JESTS (2021).

Marked by an uncompromising energy, summoning the performer to an intimate relationship with movement, the dance of the BEN AÏM brothers offers, beyond a speech, an experience, a "crossing" that the dancer performs in front of our eyes, that he lives each time with the sincerity of a full and entire presence.

With this demanding writing comes an art of composition which gives birth to the stage an imagination borrowing from dreams, from the marvelous of the tale and from invisible realities. Through a subtle effect of empathy, the audience enters an unstable world, where everything is the object of poetic questioning - a world to be experienced together.

Calendar of creations

2021

JESTS

2019

Snapshots - A series femal solos

Arise

2018

Mirages — Boreal souls

2017

Brûlent nos coeurs insoumis (Burn, rebellious hearts)

2016

Peuplé, dépeuplé (Inhabited, uninhabited)

2014

La légèreté des tempêtes

2013

La forêt ébouriffée (The Dense Forest)

L'orée des visages

Karma

2011

L'Ogresse des archives et son chien

2010

Valse en trois temps

Résistance au droit

2008

Louves

Amor fati fati amor

2007

You're a bird, now!

2006

En plein coeur

2004

Carcasses, un oeil pour deux

2003

Ne vous fiez pas au titre, il peut encore changer

2001

Ô my brother !

La Frontera

1999

Un homme en marche

L'enfant du miroir

1998

L'homme rapaillé

1997

A l'abri du regard des hommes, avant d'aller mourir ailleurs