About manger

“Dance invented anorexia. Marathon runners eat as they run. Prisoners go on hunger strike. The ritual of meals seems to be disappearing. A child eats while dancing. I dance with my mouth full. You eat lying down. She sleeps standing up. Information is digested. He dances while chewing. He chews while dancing and singing. We attack movement from the mouth. From the lips. From the fingers we suck. From the feet that touch food on the ground. Dance is from the stomach. Dance is from the palate. Dance is from the teeth. Dance is from the tongue. We remove the table and chairs and tablecloth. We devise a sort of meal in motion, we eat everything, we eat a little of everything, all the time. We are an orchestra in motion, self-fed. A speculative ecosystem. The long food chain accelerates, moving from arm to arm, the food finally disappearing into the body. There is always something for leftovers. The set becomes invisible, it has been licked until it is completely different. Choreography of juices. The choreography of people also becomes the choreography of food that goes through the space and the body from the inside. Complete permeability. The body is open to a food and then closed again. The essential is buried in the throat. You don’t want to suffocate. You swallow the message without reading it. You swallow reality. You digest conflicts. They eat in the broad sense. Reality swallowed.

… Eating lying down Sleeping standing up Digesting information Dancing with your mouth full Singing while chewing Chewing while dancing Dancing while thinking while singing while swallowing Attacking the movement from the mouth From the lips From the fingers we suck Feet touching the food on the ground Removing the table The chairs The tablecloth Taking away the ritual of the meal Devising a dinner on the move An infinite meal in motion Eating everything A little of everything All the time Long food chain that is hidden Disappearance of the set Invisibility of the essential buried in the throat Don’t suffocate Hunger strike Body-object-of-strike Swallow the message Ingest reality Digest conflicts by swallowing reality Reality swallowed Child eating dancing Self-fed human orchestra Give a titbit to the other person so that he continues to move Dance of the palate Of the teeth of the tongue and above all endless …

we eat lying down we sleep standing up we digest information we dance with our mouths full we sing while chewing we chew while walking we dance while thinking while singing while swallowing we attack the movement from the mouth from the lips from the fingers we suck from the feet that touch the food on the floor dance is from the palate dance is from the teeth dance is from the tongue we remove table and chairs and tablecloth we take away the right of the meal we devise a sort of moving meal we eat everything we eat a bit of everything all the time long food chain moved from arm to arm the food disappears into the bodies the set becomes invisible the choreography of people also becomes the choreography of food going through the space then the body from the inside the essential is buried in the throat we don’t want to suffocate we go on hunger strike our body becomes an object of striking we swallow the message we swallow reality we digest conflicts a child eats while dancing”

Boris Charmatz

“Boris Charmatz, choreographer and director of the Musée de la danse – a hybrid institution that digests formats and moves the body off-centre – subjects dance to formal constraints that redefine the scope of what it can do. This has been seen in the potentially infinite canon of gestures in Levée des conflits, and the inert bodies of children brought to life by adults in enfant… The stage becomes a test tube into which concepts and organic concentrates are thrown in order to observe the chemical reactions, the intensities and the tensions generated by their coming together. In manger, it’s movement’s centre of gravity that is shifted: how can the body be set in motion not by eyes or limbs, but by the mouth? How can we make this gaping void a perceptive environment in its own right? A crossroads where food, voice, breath, words and saliva mingle, the mouth is a place of circulation where the inside and the outside, the I and the otherness, meet, taste each other, gauge each other, exchange with one another, ingest one another. By using this metaphor as a driving force for the choreography, Boris Charmatz maps out a general area of orality: chewing something into a paste, swallowing it, the physical matter turning into a proliferating mixture. It is wolfed down, it sings, it is tasted, it becomes intermingled, it radiates from mouth to mouth until it invades the entire space. In this continuous movement of ingestion, masticated melodies suddenly appear, tableaux of the flesh, sculptures of the voice, food and skin, sketching out a collective and sensual horizon. On the borderline between a moving installation and an indeterminate sound object, manger is a “swallowed reality”, a devoured utopia, a slow digestion of the world.”

Gilles Amalvi
Extract from the programme of the Festival d’Automne à Paris and the Théâtre de la Ville-Paris