“Each person’s history unfolds through the need to be recognized, and recognized without reservation. Friendship demonstrates this infinite capacity for recognition. We must realize that others always have this need, that they are in thrall to its demands and just like ourselves, bent on receiving satisfaction; that they are consumed by it, that they are like wild animals, that life is hell when that satisfaction is not forthcoming, when it is lacking. The path of recognition seems infinite. We take a couple steps and hesitate since “we-can’t-do-everything”; but only petty cynicism would justify stepping away from such a task.” (Robert Antelme: Principles put to the test, 1958).
This fragment of a text by Robert Antelme inspired us in our work to give place and attention to anonymous or recognizable faces which, emerging, capture our eyes with a strangeness of perception, not instantaneously intelligible.
It’s a work about listening, hearing these faces speak of their absent bodies, precisely or confusedly, a particular story worn by these mute faces that forever slip away from us. They speak of a place J. L. Nancy calls “the spoken lack of words”, a place “from before or after the word” (J.L. Nancy, Penser l’image, Paris, Les Presses du réel, 2010)
Which irreducible mysteries hide behind this constellation of sensations we acquire when we meet up with the other? From the other’s face? An epiphany overflowing with expression, thereby revealing the invisibility of a singular individual standing there before us.
MAGUY MARIN
“Born in Toulouse, dancer and choreographer Maguy Marin studied classical ballet at the Toulouse dance academy. She then joined the Strasbourg Dance Company and later Mudra, Maurice Béjart’s multi-disciplinary school in Brussels. In 1978, with Daniel Ambash, she founded the Ballet-Théâtre de l’Arche, which was to become the Compagnie Maguy Marin in 1984. The Centre Chorégraphique National de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne followed in 1985: its unremitting artistic work spread worldwide.
In 1987, Marin’s encounter with musician-composer Denis Mariotte was the starting point of a decisive partnership, which broadened the scope of experimentation.
Then in 1998, a new place to settle in, for a new Centre Chorégraphique National, in Rillieux-la-Pape: a place as a we in time and space to strengthen one’s ability to foster those diagonal forces resisting oblivion (H. Arendt).
The year 2011 saw a remodeling of the framework in which the company’s reflection and achievements unfold. After the intensity of the Rillieux-la-Pape years, there emerged a need for a new phase. After 3 years spent in Toulouse, the company decided to settle in ramdam (Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon), an old carpentry workshop bought in 1995 thanks to royalties where the company will develop a new ambitious project called RAMDAM, an art center.
