Chorégraphe reconnu pour son attachement à l’image vidéo comme approche sensible du chorégraphique, Hervé Robbe nous offre dans le cadre du projet Memories (ou l'oubli) un nouvel objet audiovisuel entre documentaire et fiction, entre archive et création.

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Pour ce faire, il a convié pas moins de trente-cinq interprètes et proches collaborateurs l’ayant accompagné depuis ses débuts, « cinq générations d’artistes qui ont interprété et incarné avec virtuosité toutes ces danses qui n’ont eu de cesse de se réinventer ». 

Au travers de leurs parcours particuliers, c’est l’évolution de la danse contemporaine des trente dernières années que REMEMBRANCE nous invite à revisiter, mettant ainsi en jeu la mémoire du geste, le souvenir (ou l’oubli), sa précision (ou son imprécision), sa subjectivité et son actualisation dans un présent collectif.

Hymne aux danseurs interprètes, cette création cinématographique est portée par une intention première:

« Ne pas perdre la mémoire mais accepter l’oubli. »

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A la fois œuvre de création et outil de recherche, REMEMBRANCE se décline en une série de trois épisodes chronologiques.    

Ce premier opus évoque l’émergence de la compagnie Le Marietta Secret en 1987, et son évolution jusqu’à la fin des années 1990, représentative et parallèle à la montée en puissance de la danse contemporaine à cette période, au travers des témoignages d’interprètes tels Emmanuelle Huynh, Rachid Ouramdane, Catherine Tsekenis, Julie Nioche, entre autres…      

Born in Lille in 1961. After studying architecture for a few years, Hervé Robbe set his sights on dance. He was principally trained at Mudra, Maurice Béjart's school in Brussels. He began his performing career dancing the neo-classical repertoire, then went on to work with various modern dance makers.

In 1987 he founded his company: le Marietta secret.

The course of his career is clearly founded on a constant renewal of his choreographic writing. Supported by loyal artistic collaborators, his work has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, associating the dance presence with visual, sound and technological worlds. His projects, polysemic works, take many forms: frontal performance, ambulatory shows and installations.

The place of the audience, its presence and view is decisive; the stage space is regularly called into question.

His arrival at the CCN (National choreographic Centre) of Le Havre Haute-Normandie offered more opportunities for his research.

In 1999 he composed his autobiographical solo Polaroïd. Within it, video images of places associated with his childhood appear and coexist with an uninterrupted physical display.

In 2000 he explored the theme of home with Permis de construire – Avis de Démolition, a diptych consisting of an installation and a performance. He went on to tackle the theme of the garden in 2002 with Des Horizons Perdus.

In a world constructed with screens – virtual containers for the body, evokers of death – in the duet REW he engaged in a dialogue between man and woman on the theme of suicide. In 2004, with the group piece Mutating Score, he returned to the idea of the performance area being a common space occupied by both audience and dancers. This installation-dance, while reaffirming this conviction about the force of movement, marks the culmination of a project on the use of new technologies, which are integrated into the show in real time.

In 2006 he designed the installation So long as baby...love and songs will be, a kind of manifesto of the preoccupations which underlie his work. The device is a containing structure in which the audience is invited to watch and listen to the dancer-singers present on screen. Hervé Robbe distanced himself from the stage with this, then returned to it in the works Là, on y danse in 2007 and Next days in 2010.

While maintaining his personal approach in his own productions, he regularly accepts commissions from the Opéra de Lyon, the Gulbenkian Ballet, the CNSMDP (Paris Conservatoire) and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Source: Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre Haute-Normandie