Foules — Olivia Grandville — teaser

Teaser directed by César Vayssié at the Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, June 2015.

“For if man is shaped by circumstances, it is important to shape human circumstances.” Guy Debord

Foules is primarily a choreographic project designed for a large group.

Foules is a writing project in the form of a score, both gestural and literary.

Foules is based on a logic of situation rather than imagery.

Foules borrows from the analysis of space, in the manner of Perec, and breaks away from the subject with Lettrist insolence.

Foules winks at Allan Kaprow, Anna Halprin, Odile Duboc, and Jacques Tati.

Foules borrows its most obvious and mysterious gestures and rhythms from the street.

Foules draws concrete communities, whether conscious or random.

Foules uses virtual communities to build itself.

Foules is not a structural analysis but a cubist portrait.

Foules is interested in the internal and external balances of a group, in its own rhythms, and will impose others on it.

Foules is a living tableau composed of a multitude of snapshots on which we will refrain from commenting.

Let’s be Foules, yes! Because there aren’t often crowds at contemporary dance performances, and because intimate solo performances accompanied by music ultimately haunt us with fantasies of large bodies in motion. And is it only for economic reasons, or a stubborn hatred for anything that has to do with “bodies” (ballet or the army), or the presumption that quality cannot withstand quantity and/or vice versa? Come on, let’s trample this crowd of questions underfoot and go and blend in a little. If we can’t contain or electrify it, we can always take a dip in it, hoping not to get lynched.