Éric Minh Cuong Castaing, Aloun Marchal & Marine Relinger / Shonen

What gestures would you keep, if movement became an issue for you, a battle requiring unfailing attention? This necessity of gesture brings together on stage 3 dancers and 2 performers who have mobility issues – a dancer and an ex-professional boxer – displacing the contemporary notion of the “augmented body”, in a show that crosses performance and cinema.

'Forme(s) de vie' shares a choreographic and cinematographic experience involving 2 performers with reduced mobility and 3 professional dancers. Here, the dancers act as human, sensitive and relational prostheses, compensating for muscular and motor impediments. Bodies said to be impeded and bodies said to be virtuosic augment and influence each other. Through the gestures of their past practices, the body’s memory is reactivated, allowing them to gain in movement. Forme(s) de vie invites spectators to sit on the floor or on the stage floor, close to the performers. During the show, films are projected showing dances performed by people unable to move and unable to be present on stage. These include a group walk in nature near Mont Sainte-Victoire, and a dance in a room at the La Maison nursing home in Gardanne. On stage, alongside the “human prostheses” embodied by the dancers, a former boxer (Kamal Messelleka) and a dancer (Elise Argaud), both suffering from chronic illnesses, form the link between their friends, present on screen, and the scenic space. Onstage, the dancers encourage them to reconnect with the practices they have never abandoned, and which they have had to reinvent to combat their loss of movement.

Forme(s) de vie restores a space of intimacy and collective composition, displacing the contemporary notion of the “augmented body” (or “augmented human”), at a time when the question of disability and of a struggle for movement that concerns us all – remains relegated to the margins of our techno-scientific, competitive and hygienic societies.