Retour en Avant / Past Forward Biennale de la Danse Lyon - France

Pierre RigalA sportsman by training (hewas a member of the Frenchjunior athletics team in 1992)and an image-maker who hasdirected films and documentariesamong other pieces (he is agraduate of the École Supérieured’Audiovisuel in Toulouse), Pierre Rigalwas a latecomer to contemporarydance: during his degree he crossed pathswith Bernardo Montet, Mladen Materic, WimVandekeybus and Boris Charmatz. He laterdanced for Swiss choreographer Gilles Jobin inUnder Construction and The Moebius Strip. InNovember 2003, in Toulouse, he founded hisown company, Compagnie dernière minute, andbecame its artistic director. In 2004 he conceivedand performed his first work, staged by AurélienBory: Érection is a masterful solo at the intersectionof dance and video art, in which he tellsthe long story of Man, from crouch to uprightstance. Two years later, he created a new workwith Aurélien Bory, Arrêts de jeu, inspired by thememory of a televised soccer match, the semifinalof the 1982 World Cup.Press / 2008 creationA choreographic tragedy, or the disturbing strangenessof the ordinary, Press stages the image ofmodern man in his immense banality and enigmaticcomplexity. The body of this product-individual,an unsettling dandy, is transformed bythe standardised sequence of his own reflexes,but also by the cogs of his narrow vital space.Perhaps consentingly, he finds himself captive ina near-empty room. The mechanical modificationsof this physical and mental environmentact on his body, forcing him to constantly adapthis position and movement. He is thus drawninto an absurd and distressing impasse…How can the past shape the future?Our perspective on the past is hazy : it gives us atremendous ability to adapt and an immense forceto survive; but also a deep propensity to destruct andself-destruct. Humanity is unable, or unwilling, to curbits expansionist urge, to contain its bellicose impulses,to protect its environment, to reverse the trajectoriesof inequality. Our purpose, as defined by our learningsfrom the past, can only be a choice; a radical, profoundand violent choice; a choice able to thwart this threateninglimitation.Pierre RigalExtra info:www.pierrerigal.net69