In July 1995, a year after she had established herself in Rennes, as director of the CCNRB, Catherine Diverrès presented “Retour”, on the Place du Parlement de Bretagne, during the summer festival Les Tombées de la nuit. A first attempt at creating from previous choreographies, this work proposes “to the public of Rennes to discover, in the form of extracts, and “light touches”, the Company’s repertoire” [1] built up over the previous ten years. The choreographer would go on to reproduce an identical approach with “Echo” and “Voltes”. It was also the opportunity for the choreographer to recapture “this memory of creations which, with the passing of time, with aging occasionally, with maturity and change, persists” [2].

Borrowing from her creations “Fragment” (1989), “Ces poussières” (1993), “Tauride” (1992), “L'arbitre des élégances” (1986) and “Concertino” (1990), the choreographer wished to “highlight the colour, and the differences, the particular atmosphere that inhabits each of them, like a bouquet of impressions, by privileging the danced sequences rather than the theatrical sequences” [3]. Two anthological solos taken from “Ces poussières” and “Concertino” were performed by the choreographer herself.

This new work came about during a period of transition between the Company and the choreographic centre, two distinct creative realities, and an almost total renewal of her team of performers, which would be inaugurated with “Fruits”, her following creation. Similar to a stocktaking exercise, the term “retour” (flashback, return) was particularly effective at this stage in the choreographer’s career.

Claire Delcroix

[1] Catherine Diverrès quoted by Jean-Marc Poilpré, Les Tombées de la nuit programme for “Retour”, 3 July 1995.
[2] J.-M. Poilpré, ibid.
[3] Catherine Diverrès, paper for circulation from the CCNRB, April/July 1995.

Updating: June 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