Brucelles (lat. Bersella) are very fine spring-clips used for picking up small objects, a sort of tweezers. 

Brucelles is the encounter between three universes (Glabelle(solo), Les Taroupes (duo) and Keep Smiling* (trio)) around Robert Walser's Institute Benjamenta (cf. the film by the Brothers Quay). This source material was like a central point or a shared place through which were articulated the rites, codes, games and traditions of each of these worlds. Hybridization and co-existence, reorganization of a  mini-society out of a confrontation with solitude, with a duality and a threefold unity.

Since I arrived at Institute Benjamenta, I have already succeeded in becoming an enigma to myself. I, too, was contaminated by a very strange sense of contentment which I had never before experienced. I obeyed reasonably well, though not as well as Kraus, who has perfected the art of bending over backwards to follow orders (...) we are all alike in one respect (...) we are humble,  humble to the nth degree of servility (...) We wear uniforms, and this  uniform humiliates us and reveals everything at the same time. We look like slaves in them and it may be a shame, but we also look good, and this separates us from the profound ignominiousness of those people who  wander about in clothes that are fine for them, but dirty and torn. (...) No, what Mademoiselle Benjamenta teaches us seems to me to be  worth meditating on. It isn’t much, and we keep repeating it, but perhaps there is a secret behind all of these vain and laughable things.  Laughable? We, the boys of Institute Benjamenta, are never in the mood to laugh. Our faces and attitudes are very serious.

(...) What I know is that I will grow up to be a beautiful, big round zero.

Excerpt from Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser [Original title. Jakob von Gunten. Ein Tagebuch 1909.]

* Keep Smiling is a work in progress performance by Éric Domeneghetty, Juan Benitez and Jean Fürst. 

To learn more

Karine Ponties was born in France in 1967. She started training in dance at the Juan Tena and Ramon Soler dance schools in Barcelona, and then went on to graduate from Mudra, Maurice Bejart’s school in Brussels, in 1986.
As a performer, she worked with several companies, most notably with Frédéric Flamand, Michèle Noiret, Nicole Mossoux / Patrick Bonté and Pierre Droulers, in addition to founding Dame de Pic / Cie Karine Ponties in 1995. In 1996 the company premiered at Théâtre Le Public in Brussels with solo Planta Baja, and shortly thereafter Karine Ponties was selected for the 4th Edition of Les  Pépinières européennes for young artists.

In her over 20 years of choreographing for the company, she has created over forty pieces including commissions from the Helsinki  Theater Dance Department, Lod in Ghent, the D.C.M. Foundation in Bucharest, Montréal Danse, La Petite Fabrique in Paris, Transdance  Europe 03-06 and the Moscow Ballet. She was one of seven European choreographers selected to participate in the EU-Russian contemporary  dance project, Intradance (2010). In that context, she choreographed Mirliflor, which was awarded the 2011 Golden Mask (National Theatre Award in Russia) for the best contemporary dance performance. The attention  garnered around her work at this time later led to her collaboration  with the contemporary section of the Moscow Ballet for piece "Every  Direction is North", which was awarder the 2017 Golden Mask for best contemporary dance performance.

Ponties’ award-winning collaborations with visual artist Thierry Van Hasselt (Brutalis 2002, Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques [SACD] choreographic prize; and Holeulone, 2007 best dance performance at the French-speaking Belgian Critics' Awards) highlight  the company’s commitment to interdisciplinary exploration.

Other collaborations include composer Jan Kuijken and Lod (Les Taroupes 2000, Capture d’un caillot 2001, Brutalis 2002); composer Dominique Pauwels and Lod (Le Chant d’amour du grand singe 2005, Mi non Sabir 2004, Desirabilis 2004, Holeulone 2006, Boreas 2007), visual artist Lawrence Malstaf (Boreas 2007) and visual artist and illustrator Stefano Ricci (the Scarecrow Cycle 2008-2011, gathering babil, havran, Fidèle à l’éclair, Benedetto Pacifico and Humus vertebra).

She most recently collaborated with Czech dancer Tereza Ondrová (Best Czech Dancer 2014 and 2019) and theatre director Petra Tejnorová on duo Same Same, which was awarded the Special Jury Mention at the 2019 Czech Dance Platform.
Known for works with a flair for the absurd, exploring  intimacy and interlacing relationships, Ponties' choreographies have toured nationally and internationally, notably at the Festival de la Cité (Lausanne), Tanec Praha (Prague), Julidans Theatre Bellevue  (Amsterdam), Szene Festival (Salzburg), Dublin Fringe Festival, Centre  Culturel Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), Neuer Tanz Festival (Freiburg),  Dansstationen (Malmö), City Theater Reykjavik (Iceland), Plesni Theater (Ljubljana), Les Hivernales d’Avignon, Les Brigittines (Brussels), Agora  de la danse (Montreal), O Espaço do Tempo (Portugal), Pavillon Noir –  National Choreographic Center of Aix-en-Provence, One Yellow Rabbit  Festival (Calgary), Théâtre des Salins – Scène Nationale (Martigues),  Festival de Marseille (France), International Dance Festival of  Cochabamba (Bolivia), National Theatre of Korea (Seoul), National  Choreographic Center of Orléans, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Mimos  Festival (Périgueux), Uzès Danse, Kaaitheater (Brussels), Dance New  Amsterdam (New York), Festival de Otoño (Madrid), Dance Week Festival  (Zagreb), Vooruit (Ghent), Théâtre de la Cité (Paris). 

Dame de Pic / Cie Karine Ponties is a Belgian contemporary dance company directed by choreographer and performer Karine Ponties. Founded in Brussels (Belgium) in 1996, Dame de Pic / Cie Karine Ponties is supported by the Belgian Ministry of Culture at Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service Danse, as well as by Wallonie Bruxelles Théâtre/Danse and Wallonie Bruxelles International. The company's office is kindly hosted at Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles. 

Find out more : http://www.damedepic.be/

Au tendre by Françoise Charron

The Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser

Drawings by Vladimir Kokolia

Questions

- How many bodies were we?

- How many are left for us to inhabit, to leave?

- Designate - share similarities - join - intertwine - intervene - differ - displace - defer or integrate.

- Before each meeting, think of the road travelled by the other.