Christian Rizzo

During the premiere of ni fleurs, ni ford mustang [neither flowers, nor ford mustang] in 2004 at the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, Christian Rizzo met the dancer Julie Guibert; before long, he felt to desire to write a solo form for her, exploring her way of inhabiting the stage. Slowly tailor-made for her, like a garment, this contemplative solo is placed in the indeterminate – on the frontier of a ritual and an artistic installation. Instead of using a choreographic approach, which Christian Rizzo’s entire work seeks to subvert, he has adopted the skills of a goldsmith or calligrapher, cutting up the performer’s body, sculpting it directly in space as in a bas-relief. In a casing sculpted by Caty Olive’s vacillating lighting, Julie Guibert’s figure brings out buried aesthetic layers: each gesture is a glimpse through a perceptive door, infusing an image – into which echoes of the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini’s Nymph of Fontainebleau then glide. Is this really a solo? The presence of a chimerical figure, straight out of a David Lynch film, which remodels the space around her, composes a duet of shadows busying about the preparations for an enigmatic ceremony.