Madeleine Fournier

Bringing hearts and bodies together is essential for choreographer Madeleine Fournier. Her new creation, which is also her first group piece, relies on several excerpts from Henry Purcell’s baroque repertory and prolongs the reflection she initiated on the organic relations between voice and physical presence with her first piece Labourer. Five singer-performers embody the mythological figures of the muses of lyrical art on stage: their movements, interactions and singing evoke the harmony of a Greek theatre where music and dance were intimately connected. Echoing the work developed by philosopher Emmanuele Coccia in his book La vie des plantes, where he contends that “bodies permeate and are permeated by other bodies”, the group on stage happily vibrates as one. When tragedy occurs in the middle of the piece, it is but a necessary step in the inexorable cycle of life and the prelude to eternal rebirth.

Madeleine Fournier is a choreographer and dancer who worked with Emmanuelle Huynh and founded her company, ODETTA, in 2017, which combines dance, singing and performance. Her pieces – Labourer, Catherine und Madeleine : Zwei Palmitos, or Ce Jardin which premiered in 2019 in the Avignon Festival in the program called “Vive le sujet”  – all feature a great attention to plant life and experimental music. Her piece La Chaleur, was choreographed at the same time as Ce qui est en haut est comme ce qui est en bas, a film she co-directed.