Jérôme Bel will be our artist in residence for 2023 and 2024. During this long residency, the French choreographer will engage with the activities and missions of the CN D, and it will allow the development of specific projects combining creation, diffusion, professional training, educational and informative actions towards the general public, as well as a long-term reflection and engagement with the choreographic network. These two years will be structured along public meetings and conversations with Bel and other artists who share his outlook on dance and performance.
In his first pieces (nom donné par l’auteur, Jérôme Bel, Shirtologie…), Jérôme Bel neutralized the formal criteria of theatre performance and took some distance with choreographic expression, creating stripped-down pieces to highlight his critical reading of the economy of the stage and the body. His interest then shifted from dance as a stage practice to the question of the individuality of the performer; his series of dancers’ portraits (Véronique Doisneau, Cédric Andrieux, Xiao Ke…) emphasized spoken discourse within the choreography. From his first investigations led in The Show Must Go On, his reflection on what the theatre can do politically progressively matured with Disabled Theater and Gala. Bel collaborated with non-traditional performers (non-professional dancers, people with mental or physical disabilities, children,…), thus preferring a community of differences to a formatted generic group, the desire to dance to choreography, in a deliberate choice to promote emancipation through art.
