“One particular evening, between twenty one production seasons and ten years in Normandy, and all falling on October 21st by some strange coincidence. Twenty Plus One is a dance performance, a stroll against the flow which bounces back, a passage through the sonic and visual landscapes of a choreographic memory which reinvents itself for one evening and presents itself as a new suite overflowing with danced and poetic events to be shared. Somewhere between docu-fiction and an anthology of new choreographies, this show is also the opportunity to reunite the wonderful dancers who have worked with me over ten years. They have performed and incarnated all these dances, which have constantly been reworked, with virtuosity. Novel gestures, unusual body states, all artistic statements that have been explored and nurtured by interaction with an audience. Birthdays?
There is an age at which…one prefers the momentum and adventure of the next encounter, another step along the way to tell your story and reinvent it. In Twenty Plus One, the most important part is the “plus one”.
Neither melancholy nor nostalgia, and even less recycling. But the pleasure of taking up the work again with the help of a whole team of artists, putting the works, their subjects and natures in perspective, composing a new scenario, and presenting this new show which I hope will enchant this autumn evening…”

Source : Hervé Robbe

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