Jean-Christophe Paré

In 1983, as part of the Groupe de recherche chorégraphique de l’Opéra de Paris (GRCOP), Jean-Christophe Paré was one of a group of performers to whom Merce Cunningham transmitted Inlet’s 2. After being by his encounter with such a unique way of thinking about movement, and the way in which it radically shifts the very way of dancing, he was invited in 2019 by the CN D to conceive a piece reporting on this experience for the Fabrique John Cage & Merce Cunningham, accompanied by Orlando Bass on a prepared piano. What happens for a dancer – and especially for a ballet dancer – when their gestures are no longer anchored on musical markers? By using the disjunction between dance and music as a model, he deconstructs Inlet’s 2 so as to give us access to its inner workings – isolating views, motions, supports, figures: each highlighted angle reveals a secret score, and transforms the way we look at the architecture of the gestures and their setting in space. Over the course of six studies, linking words with movements, Jean-Christophe Paré attempts to penetrate the mysteries of choreographic invention, while exposing the performer’s body as a living dance archive.