Performance also on:
May 15, 2014 19:00

“A chair, a desk, a soundtrack, that doesn’t start. A dancer in a shirt uses strong sound effects to imitate a robot. Indeed an understandable, even conventional idea, that is until Xavier Le Roy’s play turns into a gripping mental space. Head over heels, the dancer’s body is transformed in a real time into a series of hallucinogenic morphological aberrations, representing images of body that reconfigures itself based to unwritten laws and a disquieting, inhuman rhythm. It undergoes long stases, makes infinite movements and begins to crawl abruptly. In addition to the torsion carried out in the “spectacle de danse” (dance performance), Xavier Le Roy taps into a new field where scientific and social data is transferred and imprinted in imaginary representations of the body.”
Francois Pironin

“The brightly lit performing area gives no clues to “how to read” and the mechanical – man beginning is offset with a return to ordinary task – like activity: walk, sit, turn off tape machine. By the time you’re into the contortions with the dress, we’re given this extraordinary hybrid creature which confronts us with a multiplicity of interpretations. For me it alternated variously as insect, martian, chicken, watering can, caterpillar into pupa, et al. What saved it from being a Pilobolus – like entertainment (a crowd – pleasing American group that combines bodies to create biomorphic oddities) were the stillnesses and extended durations. We must sit with our attention riveted, waiting for the next stirring. Like watching a spider or snail. Your timing in this piece is exquisite: no pandering to short attention spans here.”
Yvonne Rainer

Xavier Le Roy holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Montpellier, France, and has worked as a dancer and choreographer since 1991. He has performed with diverse companies and choreographers. From 1996 to 2003, he was artist-in-residence at the Podewil in Berlin. In 2007-2008 he was “Associated Artist” at Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, France. In 2010 Le Roy is an Artist in Residence fellow at the MIT Program in Art Culture and Technology (Cambridge, MA). Through his solo works such as Self Unfinished (1998) and Product of Circumstances (1999), he has opened new perspectives in the field of choreographic art. His latest works such as the solo Le Sacre du Printemps (2007), the group piece low pieces (2011), and works for exhibition spaces such as production (2011) created together with Mårten Spångberg, untitled  2012 for the exhibition 12 Rooms and Retrospective first realized in 2012 at the Tapiès Foundation of Barcelona, produce situations that explore the relationships between spectacors/visitors/performers and the production of subjectivities.

by and with: Xavier Le Roy
according to a collaboration with: Laurent Goldring
music: Diana Ross
organization: Vincent Cavaroc and Fanny Herserant – Illusion & Macadam
production: in situ productions and Le Kwatt
coproduction: Substanz-Cottbus, TIF Staatsschauspiel Dresden,
Fonds Darstellende Künste e.v. aus Mitteln des Bundesministeriums des Innern.
with the support from: TanzWerkstatt-Berlin, Podewil-Berlin,
the Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur, Institut français

[photo: Katrin Schoof]