Bruno Benne

While baroque dance is sometimes seen as an ancient, obsolete genre, associated with the court of Louis XIV – with its aesthetics, pomp and costumes – it is in fact a living form and practice, open to multiple interpretations, that was rediscovered during the 20th century and which is now set in the present. Bruno Benne, a dancer and choreographer who specialises in baroque dance, has always had it heart to affirm the richness of this unique model for the relationship between gestures and measures, invention and constraint, or codified and free figures. In order to highlight the variety of styles and the evolution of contemporary baroque, he has composed a diptych: on the one hand, a solo recreation of a quintet by Francine Lancelot, Les Caractères de la Danse [The Characters of Dance] (1986) on the music of the same name by Jean-Fery Rebel (1715); on the other, a new mirror-image creation in which he is pursuing his research into minimalist baroque art with the composer Youri Bessières. Each of these two interpretations display its own character – theatricality, abstraction, delicacy or a lightness of writing.