Par Claire Astier
At the mention, the writer Lucie Depauw and the choreographer Christian Ubl prefer the literality and the direct infiltration in the heart of the reality of which they propose to fill the gaps. Languages of fire made the bodies that have twisted in the flames speak before spreading on Tahrir Square, at France Telecom or in the French administration, when Djamal Chaar immolated himself in front of the Pôle emploi of Nantes in 2013. Ubl enters wide-eyed eyes, tongue drawn, on the furious rhythms of the Rite of Spring: it is Mohamed Bouazizipreparing to immolate himself and stares at the audience. In voiceover Depauw’s text is expressed in the first person as the thoughts that accompany the solitary firefly whose fleeting crossing on our screens was printed on the surface of our retinas. These men who fall are not on stage. Their passages to the rank of icons have erased their personal trajectories, embedded in stories that are no longer question to rule on the veracity. Languages of Fire seems a mourning during which it is our depictions of the revolt that Depauw introduced into these “public bodies”. Mantes-la-Jolie, Bois-Colombes, Saint-Ouen. Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria. Ubl’s dance is a statement or warning and turns the act of desperation into a manifesto. The trance inhabits the dancer who transcends the fact and authorizes its reappropriation by language: have we been affected by this body, how does it speak in us?
La Belle de Mai, Marseille, 2016, avec Christian Ubl. Photo : © Marc-Antoine Serra, permission de actoral