Xavier Le Roy

Video: „Mouvements for Lachenmann“

Xavier Le Roy studied molecular biology at the University of Montpellier and has worked as a dancer and choreographer since 1991. From 1997 to 2003 he was artist in residence at the Podewil, Berlin. He choreographed solo performances Self Unfinished (1998), Product of Circumstances (1999), was invited by Tanz im August Festival to work with Yvonne Rainer Meetings (2000), realized a piece from Jérôme Bel Xavier le Roy (2000); choreographed Giszelle (2001) in collaboration with Eszter Salamon; and Project (2003) a piece for 15 performers. He also staged Das Theater der Wiederholungen (2003) an opera from Bernhard Lang and Mouvements für Lachenmann (2005) an evening concert with music from Helmut Lachenmann. With the Berliner Philharmoniker Educational Project he choreographed Ionisation from Edgar Varèse with 40 children.

Since 2004 he is involved in various educational programs. In 2007 he choreographed a solo on the music of Igor Stravinsky Le Sacre du Printemps. In 2008 he continues is research on musician gesture and creates More Mouvements für Lachenmann. In 2007-2008 he is “associated artist” at Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, France where he co-direct the education program and together with 9 artists initiated the project 6 months 1 location to explore specific working conditions. In 2009 he presents To contemplate at the festival In-Presentable-Madrid and Xavier fait du Rebutoh at “the museum of Dance” in Rennes which he reworks to premiere in PAF under the title: Product of Other Circumstances.
In 2010 he created Floor Pieces at the Julia Stoscheck Collection in Düsseldorf and is invited as a fellow artist in residence at the MIT Program in Art Culture and Technology (Cambridge, USA).

Which issues inspire your artistic work?

How are movements (in the broadest sense) produced and what do they produce? What can be changed in the construction and perception of relationships between the causes/effects/functions of movements and how? How can we transform our actual working conditions in order to examine what they produce in terms of procedures, working methods, formats, discourse and ways of working together?

How would you describe the artistic language in which your productions are created?

… as something that I try to escape as much as I can in order to continue researching into “change” and “changing the way to change”.

Under which conditions and with what forms of collaboration are your productions created?

Conditions, constellations and collaboration are specific to each production. It is impossible to go into how and why I work on this in each production within the frame of this short text. At the moment I am associated artist of the CCN Montpellier, which means participating in most of the activities of the centre at different levels. This support from the CCNM comes on the basis of artistic activity and exchange and without any obligation to produce a show. The number of shows I produce during this period is up to me. The Centre gives me financial means (Ä 60,000 a year), premises (studio, office…) and imposes very few administrative constraints. This situation allows me to rethink, to explore and propose different kinds of conditions, constellations and cooperation artistically as well as financially, in relation to each line of work that I am involved in.

Then the labour of transformation starts fi rst by multiplying (“Theatre of Repetitions”) and extending the recognizable by degrees and thresholds of difference. For instance, individual artwork extends towards a collective research process (“E.X.T.E.N.S.I.O.N.S.”), a game exhausts the art of combination to become open-ended (“Project”), move ment language expands in a chain of super-sliding signifi ers (“Giszelle”), dancer’s body is monstrated by the disidentifying shortcircuits of the human, the animal, the machine (“Self Unfi nished”). “Salut für Caudwell” is another example of the consistency in Le Roy’s thinking. All possible forms of dissociation between what can be seen, heard, or silenced, unfold in a line of fl ight from a regular concert! The potentialities to listen, not-listen, hear, not-hear, see, not-see, in all combinations, empower one’s senses with a passion: the radical experience of possibility which is a capacity of both presence and withdrawal. To read and expose, to extend, explore and exhaust, to multiply and expand, to transform and monstrate – these are just the abbreviated terms for a poetics the consistency of which lies not in subjective self-appropriation, but in search for conditions of possibility. The spectator is caught in the process of becoming of more than one difference at once.

More Mouvements für Lachenmann (2008)
8 performers, approx. 60 min

Le Sacre du Printemps (2007)
solo, 45 min

Projekt (2003)
14 performers, 60 min

Giszelle (2001)
solo, 60 min

Xavier Le Roy (2000)
solo, 40 min

Product of Circumstances (1999)
Lecture Performance, solo, 65 min

Self Unfinished (1998)
solo, 50 min