Under your direction, the Musée de la danse has come up with a profusion of formats moving dance from its preferred spaces to other areas. What are the needs and principles behind this space, both physical - as a place - and creative - as an idea?
Again, for me, dance is mostly a mental space. For 10 years, we searched for the ideal architecture for a Musée de la danse (a dance museum), which is the name we gave to the National Choreographic Centre that I headed in Rennes. We have tested this architecture in art schools, in museums such as London’s Tate Modern or Reina Sofia in Madrid. We also tried to create this Musée de la danse in dance studios or in open spaces.
I gradually realised that the best architecture for dance was in fact a space without walls or roofs, which could be reconfigured at will by the action of the people who would come to temporarily inhabit this land or [terrain]¹.
So this[terrain] project that agitates me today is both concrete and highly speculative. I want us to settle in green, urban and choreographic spaces, in which the main architecture will be human. We will certainly need a toilet or a changing room, as we have started to imagine when we spoke with Stefano Boeri.
The architecture of this institution I’m dreaming of would be made mainly of the bodies and movements of the people who come together to make a corridor, to make several rooms, to make a theatre, to make a dance circle… It is the bodies themselves that will design the architecture of this future place.
We have already been able to test ground, with our first test in Zurich, with the Zürcher Theater Spektakel. This resulted in a very beautiful film – TANZGRUND, by César Vayssié (2021). We had organised practical and theory sessions around this project.
In 2022, we will test it in Paris, Lisbon and in Hauts-de-France, because we would like to be able to install this [terrain] both in a sedentary and itinerant manner in this region in the north of France. This is the project that motivates me right now, but I'm not going to give up playing in theatres or museums.
I do not want to limit myself and I am obviously extremely happy to be able to adapt the piece 20 Dancers for the XX Century at the invitation of Triennale Milano and the Fondation Cartier, to the magnificent Palazzo dell’Arte.