UNE FORÊT D’ÉCOUTANTS was created at the request of Festival Chahuts (Bordeaux) as part of Travaux vous êtes ici, a long-term project in which Laure TERRIER is involved. The concept behind this 2015 creation for public space is to regularly listen to a public square before, during and after its renovation. The JEANNE SIMONE company then took hold of the idea of developing a participatory and perceptive process based on a simple body experience – listening together to the public space around us…
Spectators play the role of actors, standing still with their eyes closed and listening to the hustle and bustle of the square. They need to be fully in the moment and block out the reel of images bombarding them on a daily basis, giving themselves over to the sounds around them. This strange, immobile group is both fragile and poetic. To passers-by, it looks somewhat like an organic forest of listening bodies. This FORÊT D’ÉCOUTANTS in the city centre is an unassuming manifesto of a group of people listening in to the sounds of the world. It is a simple physical exercise in listening, which gives spectators an experience that contrasts with the surrounding hubbub merely because they are there together and can be themselves. This participatory event makes no further claims. It transforms the atmosphere of a place and challenges passers-by and spectators to reconsider their relationship with the city and with others. It also seeks to create a choreography in space and time that is in tune with the city, the mark of a true choreographer.
Laure TERRIER will present “ÉCHAUFFEMENT PUBLIC” on 25 June at Dimanche à Rennes, followed by performances of “NOUS SOMMES” during Les Tombées de la Nuit, before concluding her involvement in the festival with this participatory performance on 9 July – a total of four successive performances in the city for one of our festival’s favourite artists!
BIOGRAPHY
Dancer and choreographer Laure TERRIER studied the arts before working with Odile Duboc, Laure Bonicel and Nathalie Pernette. In 2004, she founded the JEANNE SIMONE company to bring dance into public space using an intimate and non-front-facing approach in order to “return bodies to the street and to the collective experience”. She first made a name for herself by disrupting local traffic (Le goudron n’est pas meuble in 2007, Le parfum des pneus in 2010) as she worked on and experimented with intimacy and uses of public space, making non-performance areas one of the focuses of her research on the choreographical poetry of everyday life. Her approach to contemporary dance benefited from a number of encounters and training on Contact Improvisation, Instant Composition and Body-Mind Centering, as she experimented with hybrid forms and unusual performance venues with companies including Les Filles d’Aplomb, Laurent Chanel’s Révalité, Passaros, Théâtre du Zèbre and Serial Théâtre. She explains, “Choreographed moments are precise structures that leave dancers free to listen to the moment, to circumstance and to an encounter with the outside world”. Through her creations Mademoiselle (2010), Nous Sommes (2015), Une forêt d’écoutants (2015) and her children’s performances (Gommette in 2014, A l’envers à l’endroit in 2016), Laure TERRIER has gradually invented a specific body language which is both generous and versatile, and will be continued in an upcoming creation focused on walking, Sensibles Quartiers (2018).
DISTRIBUTION
De et avec : Laure Terrier / Production : Jeanne Simone / Coproduite et accueillie en résidence par : Chahuts, festival des arts de la paroles, Bordeaux
PRODUCTIONS ET ACCUEIL EN RÉSIDENCE
CHAHUTS, festival des arts de la parole, Bordeaux
