This is a deserted space, unidentifiable save for seven objects that descend from the arches and land on the floor. Launched into this space, a man is submitted to a series of ludicrous acts dictated by the objects – acts that switch between falling and taking off, success or failure, the possible or the impossible. One by one, a thirtysomething circus actor, Tsirihaka Harrivel, and a dancer in his eighties, Dominique Dupuy, are the mute actors of these acts; their differences in age and gestural language generate two interpretations of the piece, which follow on from each other with a change of register. There is no ending, whether happy or unhappy: the only thing that counts are the acts to be carried out, where the acutely elaborate gestures take precedence over absent words. A mid point between his great early pieces and those he produced later, 'Acte Sans Paroles 1' (Act without words 1), through the radical nature of its dramaturgical choices, was a unique and prophetic piece in Beckett's theatrical works that remains just as unique and remarkable in contemporary theatre.

Credits

A play by : Samuel Beckett
Adaptation : Dominique Dupuy
Scenography, Light : Éric Soyer
Adaptation assistant : Wu Zheng 
With: Dominique Dupuy, Tsirihaka Harrivel
With: l'équipe du Théâtre National de Chaillot

Production : Théâtre National de Chaillot

Coproduction : La brèche – Pôle national des arts du cirque de Basse-Normandie Cherbourg-Octeville / Centre d’action culturelle Ferme du Grand Béon 

Dominique Dupuy entered Jean Weidt's Ballets des arts at the age of 16, where he first performed solo roles such as that of the son in “La Cellule” by Jean Weidt, who was awarded first prize in the competition of the Archives internationales de la danse in Copenhagen in 1947. After several years dancing with Françoise Dupuy as “Françoise et Dominique”, the pair founded the Ballets modernes de Paris together, as part of which Dominique Dupuy would interpret several legendary roles: le Faune, le Mandarin merveilleux, le Piéton de l'air, l'Homme et son désir. Dominique Dupuy created six solos, the first of which came into being at the request of Amélie Grand and was conceived for the first week of the Avignon Dance Week, a precursor of the Hivernales Dance Festival: “Le Cercle dans tous ses états” (1979), “Trajectoires” (1980), “En vol” (1983), “Ballum circus” (1987), “L'homme debout, il…” (1995), “Opus 67-97” (1997). On more than one occasion, Dupuy expressed his opinion on the experience of making a solo, both at conferences and in publications. The project which would revive his solos came into being at the request of Luc Petton, for whom Dominique Dupuy recreated the cube sequence from “En vol” for the project “Passeur de danse”. He then recreated five other sequences for “Passeur de solitudes I”, presented in May 2000 at the Regard du cygnet centre in Paris and at the Avignon Hivernales Dance Festival.

From 1995 to 2007, he and Françoise Dupuy directed the Mas de la danse – the principal centre for the study and research of contemporary dance in France. Since then he has devoted his time to putting his archives in order.

Dominique Dupuy, died on May 1, 2024.