Pierre Droulers

Created in 1996 with the dancer Tijen Lawton, then transmitted in 2011 to Katrien Vandergooten before being reread today with Malika Djardi, this solo opens up as a danced, pluralistic dialogue with the work of Balthus, which provides it with its title. Conceived as a meeting point between dance, sculpture and painting, the choreographic score takes its inspiration from female figures from thirty-two of his paintings, reflecting their frank lines and the sensual impact of the poses. In a suspended atmosphere, favouring a meditative gaze, the performer inhabits and crosses through each of these motifs while retaining of them nothing but a bodily state marked by slowness, the power of the points of support and the precision of the restarts. From one woman to the next, the performer gradually adopts a distance from the pictorial references so as to compose using just the plasticity of her own body. Through this act of reverential treason, dance liberates itself, and thus needs to answer only to itself.

Pierre Droulers trained at Mudra, Maurice Béjart’s school, but also with Jerzy Grotowski and Bob Wilson. At a crossroads between disciplines, ever since his first productions (Désert and Dispersion, 1976), he has played on a plurality of modes: dance, words, music. By surrounding himself with visual artists (Michel François, Ann Veronica Janssens and David Claerbout) and, even though choreography still remains his centre of gravity, he has matured a form of work that eliminates theatricality and approaches the abstraction of light and empty space (De l’air et du vent, 1996, Petites formes, 1997, MA 2000). From 2004 to 2017, he was the artistic co-director, then an associate artist at Charleroi Dance, the only choreographic centre in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. In 2017, the publication of the book Sunday, Pierre Droulers Chorégraphe accompanied the project Dimanche which deployed a reactivation of the archive under presentation, kunstenfestivaldesarts. He has lodged his archives at the CN D, on the invitation of Mathilde Monnier, and revived Dimanche in January 2019, juxtaposing an exhibition, installation and choreographic reactivation. He has been pursuing his artistic approach at the crossroads between contemporary dance and the visual arts with the project They are waiting for you (in collaboration with Laure Prouvost and Sam Belinfante) presented at the Walker Minneapolis (USA) in February 2018 and the Kaaitheater (Brussels) in March 2019.