Alain Buffard

The dance Les Inconsolés takes place in the margins, on the edges, like a search for an imperceptible future or perhaps an attempt (or the temptation of) an impossible figuration. How to express a body on stage? And how to bring out, above and beyond flesh, all that the body conveys – what it has experienced, gone through and been overcome by? Exposed in fragments, in pieces, or gesticulating like marionnettes in a danse macabre, the three performers seek to summon up ‘inerasable instants that last for ever’. Playing on the movement between centre and periphery, shadow and light, face and mask, they hug each other, clash, exchange gestures, transmit states or grapple with excitement, desire, violence and loss. Something moves between them, something that persists – death, perhaps, or one of its figurations. At the frontier of statuary, of the tale, of the sadomasochistic ritual, of lovemaking, Les Inconsolés forms a choreographic poem that is close to ancient mystery: a dance on the verge of obliteration, where Eros and Thanatos become naked.