First there is a body. Dressed in large white briefs. Palely lit by two lamps. Folded up, embryonic, almost painful, making micro-movements. His breathing is perceptible beneath his ribs, the movements intensifying. Then a rebirth, almost, starting from nothing. This body is the one in Good Boy by the French choreographic genius Alain Buffard. By the time he met the post-modernist choreographer Yvonne Rainer, he hadn’t danced for seven years. She gave him the strength and instinct to create this choreography that dropped the sentimentalised body in dance at the time to create a “useless” body of artistic reality. Of political reality too, because in his creations Alain Buffard exposed the AIDS years. He died in 2013. Good Boy is one of the four pieces that he gave permission to be danced, passing on this piece performed here by Christophe Ives.
Création en 1998 à la Ménagerie de Verre à Paris, réinterprétation en 2012 par Mathieu Doze et transmission en 2023 / Conception : Alain Buffard / Interprétation : Christophe Ives / Assistant à la création et transmission : Matthieu Doze / Accompagnement artistique : Fanny de Chaillé / Partition sonore (Collection Palix) : Andante de la sonate n°1 en si mineur de J.S. Bach, BWV 1014 par Glenn Gould et Jaime Laredo, Good boy par Kevin Coyne, New York, New York par Wendy Mae Chambers / Directrice de production, diffusion : Isabelle Ellul / Attachée de production, communication : Jeanne Dantin
Production déléguée : Association Display / Coproduction, résidence : Ménagerie de Verre / Soutien : ministère de la Culture – DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Région Auvergne Rhône-Alpes / Fanny de Chaillé est artiste associée au TPM Théâtre Public Montreuil – CDN et à Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse
© Marc Domage