Georges Appaix chooses the titles of his performances by going through the letters of the alphabet. Now arrived at the letter P, he twists his own system, at the same time cocking a snook at memory, by associating it with the letter A. Within the same show, he also shifts back and forth between past and present by applying the Latin expression literally (A posteriori: from what comes after).

A is for “Antiquities”, founding work of the company La Liseuse, which is back more that twenty years after its creation, as if welling up from memory, in snatches. Against the background of his inimitable trademark, the scansion of lines from Homer by the dancers, the whiteness, the density, the disciplined and complex lines and rhythms, “Antiquities” allows itself to be invaded by the present, colourful, lively and open. From Homer's great epic to the minor stories of everyone's distractions, the performance sets us drifting in a gentle disorientation between yesterday and today. “A posteriori” is constructed on a shifting back and forth, within the same show, between newly-created parts and extracts from “Antiquities”. These extracts, reconstructed from Labanotation, are inserted into the show as flash-backs would be in a film.

“Ulysses seems to suffer his fate as a sailor suffers the elements of nature and to have but little hold over the enemy, and yet, those lost years, were they really lost?”

Georges Appaix

Updating: March 2010

Born in Marseilles in 1953 and a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers, he also trained at the same time as a saxophonist at the Aix-en-Provence Conservatoire and studied contemporary dance in Odile Duboc's classes and workshops.

From 1978 he danced for Odile Duboc in several works for which he composed the music, then for Josette Baïz, Stéphanie Aubin and Daniel Larrieu. He has also devised numerous street performance projects for the Danse à Aix festival.

Further information: laliseuse.org

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.).

Georges Appaix founded the company La Liseuse in 1984, whose name evoked above all "La Liseuse sur fond noir" by Matisse. Based in Marseille since 1991 and at the Friche la Belle de Mai since 1993, La Liseuse has produced around forty pieces of contemporary dance, ranging from solo to piece for around ten performers.

Source: La Liseuse