[Words of fire] 

“Exhale, inhale the damp breath of fiery energy. In the deliberately chosen space of the Chapelle Fromentin, work to let the good space in oneself appear. Because fire wants to be transformed into danced words. Dance, supported by the ambivalent material of the element of fire, while being fired correctly in a momentum as impassioned as it is detached. The gravity of the object is unlimited and the risks of going up in flames multiple.” (Régine Chopinot, quoted in the programme of the public rehearsal on 4 December, 1996) “Paroles du feu” represents the continuation of the research undertaken in “Végétal” (“Plant”) (1995) and also works with the elements. Here fire is in the spotlight, with all the imaginary worlds it generates, its capacity for transformation and its relationship with the body. It is about a work about the inner fire, about listening to the body. The piece was created especially for the Chapelle Fromentin (workplace of the BARC in La Rochelle) and would be presented first at the Montpellier Danse Festival and then at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.  The music, composed by the Vietnamese Tôn-Thât Tiêt – who would work again with Chopinot in 1999 on “La Danse du temps (Dance of time)” – is played live by a string trio, accompanied by three other musicians and is broadcast in 4.0 surround sound.  The audience sits in a square around the dancers, who play with volumes of the Chapelle Fromentin and the points of the compass. “Paroles du feu” begins with a solo by Chopinot, followed by the circling of the dancers. Set design is by the visual artist Florence Gourier, a trained painter, who designed a minimalist set consisting of a floor of ashes.

The show was not received particularly well: as for “Végétal”, the audience was unsettled by this piece, whereas the following piece “Les Quatre Saisons” (The Four seasons) (1998) was much more successful, due undoubtedly to its somewhat simpler approach, accompanied by the music of Vivaldi.

Programme extract

““Paroles du feu” is a piece that makes no concessions to simple aesthetics. But it is stripped of any austerity. Carnal, marvellous in its sensory while listening to interior fires, it is to be enjoyed with the body, from the spatial-temporal place which it creates in us, which it illuminates even for the veiled darkness of secret combustions.”

Laurence Louppe, Théâtre de la Ville de Paris journal, March 1998

Updating: February 2013

Régine Chopinot, born in 1952 in Fort-de-l'Eau (today known as Bordj El Kiffan), in Algeria, was attracted to choreographic art from early childhood. After studying classical dance, she discovered contemporary dance with Marie Zighera in 1974. She moved to Lyon where she founded her first company in 1978, the Compagnie du Grèbe, which included dancers, actors and musicians. Here, she created her first choreographies. Three years later, she was awarded second prize in the Concours chorégraphique international de Bagnolet (Bagnolet International Choreographic Contest) for “Halley's Comet” (1981), later known as “Appel d'air”. Her next pieces of work “Délices” (Delights) and “Via”, introduced other media including the cinema to the world of dance. In 1983 with “Délices”, Régine Chopinot began her longstanding partnership with the fashion designer, Jean Paul Gaultier, which would characterize the period, which included works such as “Le Défilé” (The Fashion show) (1985), “K.O.K.” (1988), “ANA” (1990), “Saint Georges” (1991) and “Façade” (1993). In 1986, Régine Chopinot was appointed director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Poitou-Charentes (Poitou-Charentes National Choreography Centre) in La Rochelle (where she succeeded Jacques Garnier and Brigitte Lefèvre's Théâtre du Silence), which went on to become the Ballet Atlantique-Régine Chopinot (BARC), in 1993. Régine Chopinot made a myriad of artistic encounters: from visual artists like Andy Goldsworthy, Jean Le Gac and Jean Michel Bruyère, to musicians such as Tôn-Thât Tiêt and Bernard Lubat.

At the beginning of the 90s, she moved away from – according to her own expression – “ultra-light spaces” in which, at a young age, she had become acknowledged, in particular through her partnership with Jean Paul Gaultier. She then became fascinated with experimenting on confronting contemporary dance with natural elements and rhythms and on testing age-old, complex body sciences and practices, such as yoga. In 1999, as part of “associate artists”, Régine Chopinot invited three figures from the world of contemporary dance to partner with her for three years on her artistic project: Françoise Dupuy, Dominique Dupuy and Sophie Lessard joined the BARC's troupe of permanent dancers and consultants-researchers, as performers, pedagogues and choreographers.

In 2002, she initiated the “triptyque de la Fin des Temps” (Triptych of the End of Time), a long questioning of choreographic writing and creation subsequent to her creation of a voluntary state of crisis of general notions of time, of memory and of construction. “Chair-obscur”, her first chapter, focused on erasing the past, the memory, whilst “WHA” was based on the disappearance of the future. “O.C.C.C.” dealt with the “time that's left”, with what is left to be done, with what can still be done, in that simple, yet essential spot called performance. In 2008, “Cornucopiae”, the last work created within the Institution, concluded the end of a form of performance and opened the doors to another approach to sensorial perception.

Concurrently to her choreographic work, Régine Chopinot worked, as a performer, with other artists that she was close to: Alain Buffard (“Wall dancin' - Wall fuckin'”, 2003; “Mauvais Genre”, 2004), Steven Cohen (“I wouldn't be seen dead in that!”, 2003). In addition, she trained and directed Vietnamese dancers as part of a partnership with the Vietnam Higher School of Dance and the Hanoi Ballet-Opera (“Anh Mat”, 2002; “Giap Than”, 2004). In 2008, the choreographer left the CCN in La Rochelle and created the Cornucopiae - the independent dance Company, a new structure that would, henceforth, harbour creation and repertoire, all the works of Régine Chopinot. In 2010, she chose to live and work in Toulon, by its port.

Since 2009, Régine Chopinot has been venturing, questioning and intensifying her quest for the body in movement linked to the strength of the spoken word, through cultures organized by and on oral transmission, in New Caledonia, New Zealand and Japan. These last three years have been punctuated by a myriad of artistic creations: choreographies and films resulting from artistic In Situ experiences were created as part of the South Pacific Project. A privileged relationship initiated in 2009 with the Du Wetr Group (Drehu/Lifou) bore its fruits with the creation of “Very Wetr!”at the Avignon Festival in July 2012 and went on to be reproduced at the Centre national de la danse (National Centre for Dance) in February 2013.

More information

cornucopiae.net

Last update : March 2012