In this work for 4 performers presented in 1984 at the Concours chorégraphique international de Bagnolet (Bagnolet International Choreographic Contest), where it won first prize as well as the French Ministry of Culture award, Catherine Diverrès evokes the figure of Helen Adams Keller – the blind, deaf and dumb American lecturer and political activist – by drawing her inspiration from “La forme du rêve” (Dream Form), a novel by the Japanese writer Hanya Yukata. This dream imagined by the writer Hanya Yukata is described as “a tactile dream deprived of tactile perceptions (...) which has to blot out all external elements and allows only to see something indubitably come spontaneously into being from the sole World of Darkness” [1]

As the introduction to her presentation for the Châteauvallon Festival, the choreographer announced her project, which was highly-remote from any type of portrait, in the following words: “We will remain in this sort of dream consciousness that persists in our wakeful and daytime consciousness: in this place where light and day, waking and sleeping are shared; at the point of masculine-feminine ambiguity, at the social reference point. The question of limitation is asked. Physical and visual exasperation touches this state of no-limit, of immoderation, a feeling of fragility contained in things”. [2]

In this work, blindness is alluded to through physical suggestion: “Here, there is no game with any whatsoever imaginary or real sign language, but work on the various dimensions of darkness, of perception, of the intelligence of touch” [3] writes Irène Filiberti. And, equating this work research which can be seen in her other creations, she adds: “Just like bodily states are pursued, where their paradoxical potential – fever, waking, hypnosis, somnambulism – plays a role in the atmosphere of the creations”.

The critic Laurence Louppe qualifies “Le Rêve d’Helen Keller” as a project that is “radical and absolutely unusual” and continues:“Montet-Diverrès shared the blindness of the pure body with us. They managed to appear, difficult to do, in a spaceless, imageless world. Experience veering on the impossible. Yet, through this paradox, they took us back to the very roots of an elusive impulse, which perhaps is known as dance. Having reached this extreme point where the danced purpose could have absorbed itself in the invisible, “Le Rêve” still led to a highly-important spectacular figure: the lines stated the muffled quelling of silence and the obscure, reinvented the writing of the unseen, where body and unconsciousness explored their own periphery” [4] 

[1] C. Diverrès in “Var République Matin: Ve Festival de Châteauvallon danse”, 12-25 July 1984.
[2] C. Diverrès in “Var République Matin: Ve Festival de Châteauvallon danse”, 12-25 July 1984.
[3] I. Filiberti, “Catherine Diverrès, mémoires passantes”, Pantin, Paris: Centre national de la danse, L'Oeil d'or, 2010, p. 52.
[4] Laurence Louppe, ““Lie”-tinéraire de Catherine Diverrès”, Pour la danse, n° 119, November 1985, p. 18-19.

Claire Delcroix, March 2016

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