instants mobiles 2004

moveable moments | France 2oo1, 2oo4, 2oo5

During the year of the “new circus”, as part of a Fiacre grant programme, the idea of creating a meeting between a graphic artist and a circus performer came into being. Malte Martin decided to provide François Chat, a juggler and dancer, with the two basic elements of the graphic arts: letters and paper. He set up an alphabet garden on rods. The letters were set at different heights, vibrating on their long thin wire legs, brushed by the dancer’s movements.

The composer Patricia Dallio gave each of the letters a particular sound. A sensor triggered this sound whenever there was any contact. So the dancer could compose his own score, as he saw fit. The performance was an open form. It was based on figures worked in advance, plus a share of improvisation in front of the audience. As for the paper, Malte proposed replacing the juggler’s balls with it. He chose large sheets of silk paper, supple, diaphanous and unpredictable in its transformations. Sheets tossed into the air; they became crumpled, then unfurled; they speeded up and then slowed down, marrying the forms of the body, floating in whimsical clouds.

The third part projected a poem by Jacques Rebotier. The dancer-cum-juggler caught the ink of the words in the palms of his hands, coats them with their presence, plays the rebound from one hand to the other, but at the right distance, presenting his hands like pages to be read by the spectators. This performance, lasting 3o-4o minutes, was put on three times. The first time in 2oo1 at Chaumont, with François Chat, as part of the Festival of Graphic Arts, re-created in 2oo4 with Bertrand Lombard for a second performance in the St Exupéry cultural center in Reims, during the festival of digital art, and the third time with Marion Ballester at the Ligne de fuite (Vanishing Line) festival of the Scène nationale of St Quentin-en-Yvelines in 2oo5.