Pol Pi

Pol Pi – IN YOUR HEAD (Studio Residency 2021)

“What happens in a musician’s body when she plays? How does music inhabit bodies, move through them making them vibrate, move, act bringing them into resonance with the score through this object that is both inert and alive: the instrument?

The performer plays, the performer dances an inner dance, focused, precise, most often invisible to the eye, except for what surfaces: technical gestures, subtle tremors of the limbs, expressions of the face. With the intuition of revealing this embodied music, choreographer Pol Pi trained as a musician and a long-time violist started from two key points.

On the one hand, Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8: a testamentary work composed fifteen years after the Second World War as a “requiem for himself.” Its central motif, built on his initials (D–E♭–C–B), acts like a ghost hovering over the music—carrying the shadows of war and oppression that marked his life and career.

On the other hand, his encounter with the Berlin-based ensemble Kaleidoskop, dedicated to experimenting with instrumental music through the exploration of the body and stage. Together with four musicians Sophie Notte (cello), Anna Faber and Mia Bodet (violins), and Yodfat Miron (viola) Pol Pi sought to extract the essence of their intimate, daily, sometimes conflicted or passionate relationship to music and their instruments, composing a series of portraits resonating with the score.

Faithfully followed, guiding every breath, every inflection of a finger, every movement of a limb, the score becomes an intermediary between the language of notes and that of bodies between Shostakovich’s concerns and those of the present. In this interplay between staves and gestures, solo and quartet, silence and rhythm, a subtle choreography unfolds one that allows us to see the music just as much as to hear the movement.”

Gilles Amalvi

Credits

  • Conception et direction artistique Pol Pi
    Création Anna Faber (violon), Mia Bodet (violon), Yodfat Miron (alto), Sophie Notte (violoncelle) et Isabelle Klemt (violoncelle)
    Performeurs Anna Faber (violon), Mia Bodet (violon), Yodfat Miron (alto) et Isabelle Klemt (violoncelle)
    Dramaturgie Gilles Amalvi
    Création lumières et objets lumineux Rima Ben Brahim
    Création costumes La Bourette, assistée de Lucie Lizen
    Régie son Baptiste Chatel
    Regard extérieur Boram Lie
    Production Sarah Becher

  • Production NO DRAMA et Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop
    Production déléguée Latitudes Prod. – Lille


    Coproductions Montpellier Danse ; CCNO – Centre chorégraphique National d’Orléans ; Fonds Transfabrik – Fonds franco-allemand pour le spectacle vivant ; CCN – Ballet National de Marseille ; Centre national de danse contemporaine d’Angers ; centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie, dans le cadre de l’Accueil-studio/Ministère de la Culture ; Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape, direction Yuval PICK, dans le cadre du dispositif Accueil-Studio ; Festival NEXT ; BUDA Kunstencentrum Courtrai ; PACT / Zollverein Essen


    Projet soutenu par la Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Fondation Culturelle Fédérale en Allemagne), la Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Déléguée du gouvernement fédéral à la cul-ture et aux médias); le Senate Départment de la Culture et de l’Europe Berlin ; le Fonds Transfabrik – Fonds franco-allemand pour le spectacle vivant, et par la Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations.
    La compagnie NO DRAMA a obtenu une aide à la structuration par la DRAC Île-de-France. Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop est soutenu par le Senate Départment de la Culture et de l’Europe Ber-lin.

    Remerciements Nitsan Margaliot, Josephine Boivineau, Léa Gallet, Anaïs Fornes, Caroline Lefèvre, Elisa Hernandez, Juan Pablo Landazuri, Yi-Wei Wang, Amandine Lesca, Lucas Soares, Alina Tskhovrebova, Muriel Garric, Paul Grassin et Louise Phelipon.

  • Création française : Montpellier Danse, Montpellier – 23 et 24 juin 2022

    Création allemande : Radialsystem, Berlin – février 2023