“Cantieri” – “projects (in progress)” in Italian – Catherine Diverrès’ first work abroad since she created “Instance” in Japan in 1983, was initiated during a residence in Palermo in spring 2002 (April-May) at the Cantieri alla Siza warehouses, an artistic expanse accommodated in former industrial workshops on the outskirts of the city. The creative process continued at the National Choreographic Centre (CCN) of Rennes in June the same year, and the work premiered at the Théâtre National de Chaillot in October 2002.

Catherine Diverrès instigated this residence abroad to disconnect her Company from the Choreographic Centre in Rennes and to challenge its members to “a new work experience” focusing on encounters and exchange: “this means embracing a city, living there on a daily basis, meeting the artists who work there, apprehending new spaces, frequenting other places. (…) What do we do today with the experience of physically encountering a space, a culture, a person? What acts connect us together, what happens to the dimension of work and of exchange? What sort of links and involvements bring us closer or distance us?” By choosing Palermo, Catherine Diverrès chooses the Mediterranean Basin, where she sees the cradle of humanistic culture and a myriad of values of European civilization.

“Cantieri” showcases twelve dancers from different countries: France, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Japan. Four of them are from Catherine Diverrès’ Company. The title of the work, in addition to explicitly referring to the Sicilian site where it was created, aims to highlight two other ideas covered by the term “project”: a process in progress over time, the beginning of contemplation, in this case, on the Mediterranean Basin, “a project focusing on memory and utopia” just as much as on current relevance.

Inspired by preliminary historical and literary readings (the choreographer mentions Vittorino and Sciascia), as well as visits and encounters, the work juxtaposes scenes reproducing the Sicilian experience as a travel diary, yet makes sure it does not “drift towards too much incarnation, in the manner in which the being on the stage would be identical to the being in the street”, but makes the choice to conjure up through the emotional and abstraction: “I cannot resign myself. No matter how incarnate, tangible, sensitive and sensual s/he is, s/he [the being] must be a shadow, an artifice, at that moment even more so when s/he dances”. [1]

Whilst the force of the elements (water, earth, air, fire), the “telluric energy”, which the choreographer says she experiences physically “simply by walking on Sicilian soil”, are used as objects for research and improvisation work undertaken in the studio, different themes are brought together to evoke the island: family, religion, clans, violence, war, the separation of men and women, the gestuality of the Sicilian language, gestures related to the traditional art of the puppi (Sicilian puppets), the tragic. To “find connections between the various themes of reflection and choreographic writing” [2], the choreographer says that she drew inspiration from a text by the philosopher Empedocles “which talks about atoms and about love-hate conflicts” and develops a theory according to which “hatred brings about dispersion and demystification, whereas love means unity and immobility” [3]. “The work is structured around this dichotomy between a space that is shattered, scattered and a space where the group becomes as one” [4].

As regards the production, right from her statement of intent, Catherine Diverrès makes it clear that she wishes to reconnect with the great theatrical machinery. She is helped in this endeavour by her usual work companions, the stage designer Laurent Peduzzi and the lighting designer Marie-Christine Soma, accustomed since the end of the 1990s to more ascetic demands: “I wish to explore (...] the world of theatrical machinery that can be enchanting. In contrast to the demanding, sophisticated and somewhat “ascetic” work on the pared down lighting and stage design that prevailed over the last few years, I would like to attempt a “shot” at the world of theatrical illusion, in a playful way, yet without sacrificing the abstraction of choreographic writing, the marvellous tension that it is able to sustain and the emotion that emanates from it”. [5]

The resulting set-up is “an abandoned urban space, which is in turn emptied, shaped – even saturated – by materials, images, dance and lights”, as the critic Irène Filiberti describes it, where the hard, golden floor draws its inspiration from the place used for the residence: “By laying on all the pomp and ceremony of theatrical illusion, the stage design (...) captures [elusive, ghostly beings] in the midst of action, like this angel hanging from the rigging or these shadow puppets scheming behind the screen with the greatest voices of Italian cinema” [6]. Reviews equate this work, in which dance confronts Baroque and abstract spaces, with the research embarked on in “L'Arbitre des élégances” that the choreographer created in 1986.

The sound design created by Denis Gambiez reproduces the same spirit and weaves together Sicilian music and chanting, voices from Italian cinema and concrete noises (aircraft humming, wind tunnels, bells, bird sounds, ambient noises (street, hall echoes), etc.), all immersed in the Italian and Sicilian language.

By choosing to conjure up the sensitive, “Cantieri” also intends to embrace resistance faced with the delicate political situation which artistic creation was experiencing in Italy. Like the work, which aims to be a space for exchanging and for movement, the residence led to “training courses focusing on elements related to her technique and evocative of her choreographic writing” and to discussion/reflection on the subject “Standing”, which accompanied a presentation of Sicilian choreographers encountered (Emma Scialfa, Cinzia Scordia, Pucci Romeo, Alessandra Fazziono): “Through this working period in Sicily, links have also been patiently created with mainland Italy so that exchanges may be initiated not only around the work to come, but also with artists, critics, through workshops and debates. In this period that is politically difficult in Italy for culture and artistic creation, we believe it is important to put our energies to use in reflection and in practice based on singularities, differences and the inherent coherence that unites those who work artistically. Give this cultural Europe faces, bodies, voices, not just through ideas but also through physical, concrete, sensitive links and places” [7].

Claire Delcroix

[1] C. Diverrès, “Cantieri, un processus”, in “Cantieri”, Rennes: Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne, [2002], p. 63.
 [2] ibid, p. 49
 [3] ibid.
 [4] Claudia Palazzolo, ““Cantieri”, la matière, le temps, les traces. Un témoignage”, in I. Filiberti, “Catherine Diverrès : mémoires passantes”, Pantin; Paris: Centre national de la danse; L'œil d'or, 2010, p. 132-139.
 [5] Catherine Diverrès, “Cantieri”, Company website, February 2014.
 [6] Irène Filiberti, “Cantieri”, TNB magazine, November-February 2003, p.
 [7] Catherine Diverrès, Cantieri alla Zisa programme for “Cantieri aperti”: encounters, debate and presentation of work”, 23-26 May 2002.

PROGRAMME EXTRACT

“Cantieri, means “projects (in progress)” in Italian, but it also means this area of abandoned warehouses close to the centre of Palermo where Catherine Diverrès and her Company worked for two months creating a masterful work. “Cantieri” because the work goes through all the states, highlights the current topics of a Sicily in crisis, rediscovers the fabulous memory of an architectural past that is now abandoned, exacerbates feelings to the point of theatricality, but also the violence of the dichotomy between men and women inherited from archaic social and family structures. “And it is for this reason that the choreography begins with two groups, one comprising women, the other comprising men. They put on shoes and they walk. How, in reality, do we move on from the notion of family to the notion of clan. How can these clans exist whenever they are not noticeable in everyday life. Their presence impacts space and attitudes diffusely, imperceptibly”. With twelve dancers of different nationalities, Catherine Diverrès succeeds in setting a world in motion on the stage of the Corum [of Montpellier], on a floor as hard as concrete, that has the quality, the telluric energy of Sicilian soil where “simply be walking you can feel the force of the elements”. The dance can be felt through its decelerations which have the power of the tragic, yet by no means shrinks away from making a few nods to Fellini, consequently Sicily opens up to the rest of Italy, and it is a people moving together that Catherine Diverrès generous choreography embraces”.

Montpellier-Danse 2003 season brochure.

Updating: March 2014

Catherine Diverrès has said, “Conscience, our relationship with others, this is what creates time”, ever since her first choreographic creation. She is a sort of strange meteor, appearing in the landscape of contemporary dance in the mid-80’s. She stood out almost immediately in her rejection of the tenets of post-modern American dance and the classically-based vocabularies trending at that time. She trained at the Mudra School in Brussels under the direction of Maurice Béjart, and studied the techniques of José Limón, Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais before joining the company of Dominique Bagouet in Montpellier, then deciding to set out on her own choreographic journey.

Her first work was an iconic duo, Instance, with Bernardo Montet, based upon a study trip she took to Japan in 1983, during which she worked with one of the great masters of butoh, Kazuo Ohno. This marked the beginning of the Studio DM. Ten years later she was appointed director of the National Choreographic Center in Rennes, which she directed until 2008.

Over the years, Catherine Diverrès has created over thirty pieces, created her own dance language, an extreme and powerful dance, resonating with the great changes in life, entering into dialogues with the poets: Rilke, Pasolini and Holderlin, reflecting alongside the philosophers Wladimir Jankelevich and Jean-Luc Nancy, focusing also on the transmission of movement and repertoire in Echos, Stances and Solides and destabilising her own dancing with the help of the plastician Anish Kapoor in L’ombre du ciel.

Beginning in 2000, she began adapting her own style of dance by conceiving other structures for her creations: she improvised with the music in Blowin, developed projects based on experiences abroad, in Sicily for Cantieri, and with Spanish artists in La maison du sourd. Exploring the quality of stage presence, gravity, hallucinated images, suspensions, falls and flight — the choreographer began using her own dance as a means of revealing, revelation, unmasking, for example in Encor, in which movements and historical periods are presented. Diverrès works with the body to explore the important social and aesthetic changes of today, or to examine memory, the way she did in her recent solo in homage to Kazuo Ohno, O Sensei.

And now the cycle is repeating, opening on a new period of creation with the founding of Diverrès’ new company, Association d’Octobre, and the implantation of the company in the city of Vannes in Brittany. Continuing on her chosen path of creation and transmission, the choreographer and her dancers have taken on a legendary figure, Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons, in Penthésilée(s). In returning to group and collective work, this new work is indeed another step forward in the choreographer’s continuing artistic journey.

Source: Irène Filiberti, website of the company Catherine Diverrès

More information: compagnie-catherine-diverres.com

Bibliography

Publications

Catherine Diverrès, “Cantieri”, Rennes: Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne, [2002]

Claudia Palazzolo, ““Cantieri”, la matière, le temps, les traces. Un témoignage”, in I. Filiberti, “Catherine Diverrès : mémoires passantes”, Pantin; Paris: Centre national de la danse ; L'Oeil d'or, 2010, p. 132-139

Press articles

Irène Filiberti, “Un chantier entre mémoire et utopie : entretien avec Catherine Diverrès à propos de “Cantieri””, mouvement.fr, 15 September 2002

Irène Filiberti, ““Cantieri”, de la chair à l'abstraction”, www.mouvement.fr, 15 September 2002

Irène Filiberti, Mouvement, n°18, September-October 2002 p. 29-31

Rosita Boisseau, “Les chantiers siciliens inaboutis de Catherine Diverrès”, Le Monde, 16 October 2002

M.-C. Vernay, “Catherine Diverrès, en gestes de reconstruction”, Libération, 12 October 2002

Irène Filiberti, “Cantieri”, TNB magazine, November-February 2003, p. 4