This reading/demonstration was created for the Festival de la correspondance de Grignan (Grignan correspondence festival) in July 2013. The public welcome made us want to begin this strange show once again. It is a reading of the correspondence of Marcel Duchamp with his friend Henri-Pierre Roché, covering the period of 1922 to 1952. Three characters are positioned around a table: Marcel Duchamp, who reads his letters; the bachelor herself, who comments, and the person outside the frame, who is in charge of accounts. The roles are flexible and sometimes mix. Although Marcel Duchamp was close to the Surrealists, his correspondence is nevertheless realistic: he covers material issues with Henri-Pierre Roché from his base in Paris or New York.

Gérald Stehr is the author and initiator of this project of Duchamp's correspondence. He has compiled extracts, allowing us total freedom of adaptation. We have opted for real simplicity and a minimalist staging: little dance, no music, a few symbolic objects and the projection of a film by Marcel Duchamp. “Reducing, reducing, reducing was my obsession,” Marcel Duchamp used to say.

Source : Cie DCA

Dancer, choreographer, director and art director

As a child, I dreamt of becoming a comic book artist. Drawing is usually the start of my creative process. I just throw out ideas and sketch out pictures that pass through my head. My culture is comics, musicals, nightclub dancing, and also Oskar Schlemmer, the Bauhaus choreographer. Discovering photos of characters from his Triadisches Ballett was a revelation for me. I had always wanted to work with simple geometric shapes like cubes and triangles. I liked seeing how these lines and volumes behaved with each other. Alwin Nikolaïs taught me the importance of light and costume, and the confidence you need to mix everything together. Technically, it was Merce Cunningham who taught me the most about dance. I was taking video courses he was giving in New York. It was fascinating. That’s where I learned how to solve problems of distance and geometry, and the basic principles of optics and movement. Tex Avery inspired me a lot in thinking up gestures that are almost impossible to do. I’ve always kept something of that desire to create something strange, extreme or crazy in my movements. I’m looking for a dance style that’s off-balance, always on the verge of toppling over. With influences like the Marx Brothers, for example, and in particular Groucho Marx, I’ve developed a taste for naughty risk-taking, and comic repetition of mistakes.

Source : Philippe Découflé

More information : cie-dca.com