The terms that make up the title of Yoann Bourgeois's new creation - Memory of to fall - introduce us into an emotional environment, and thus into a context of meanings, tending toward two opposite directions. from one side, memory, a concept linked to the idea of something that "holds" and consequently to verbs such as collect, cherish, share, and transmit. Whether to short or to long term, voluntary or involuntary, faithful or treacherous, memory is the unpredictable custodian of what has happened and enables remembrance of the past.

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Text by Gaia Clotilde Chernetich

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Remembering is, in fact, that faculty that both "holds together" (and sometimes "constrains"), since it is able to lead gazes and attention to certain elements, and "frees," since it is immaterial, ineffable and subject to loss. In the discipline of dance, as well as in the practice of dancing, memory is essential in every respect and is sometimes itself the object of research, observable both to macro level, in dramaturgies, and in the micro, in sequences of repeated bodily elements, in movement references between different works, in the transmission of repertoires.
At the other end of the thread of the title of this site-specific performance is the concept of falling, an inescapable bodily competence that presents its own evolutionary line within the history of the live arts. In Yoann Bourgeois' poetic universe this is, first and foremost, a concrete action, a physical phenomenon that does not suffer and, indeed, "acts" gravity. Falling is, technically, the inexorable epilogue to which everything is destined. Falling is the step toward the end, or toward a new beginning, and, in this case, every fall is both gravitational magnetism and leap.

In Memory of to fall and memory are simultaneously origin and perspective, both dizzyingly broad, feeding and sustaining the performance conceptually and choreographically. Between them is a taut thread, on which Yoann Bourgeois builds this project of impalpable origins, "born from an intuition of an emotional nature, not from a concept that can be expressed to words."

In the performance we find some of the pivotal themes of his eclectic style and his way of articulating thoughts and bodies around to that device which, by convention, we call a scene. It is not possible to define to which discipline this work belongs to. Yoann Bourgeois comes from circus art, but it is mainly in the field of dance that he has found his artistic and productive place. His works are multidisciplinary by their very nature. What we invite you to observe is how dance leads the gaze inside actions, gestures, glances, situations that, in perception, will form emotionally significant images, as well as dramaturgical ones, even though there is no explicit linear narrative. The peculiarity of the dance testifies, beyond virtuosity, to a focus on presence. The performance, in fact, holds to a further dimension, in which all concepts-as well as all bodies-are sublimated into a unique here and now that makes presence not an effect but the very cause of creation. The show is rooted in a reflection that, in the artist's words, concerns "the courage of those who try to to stay alive." At stake we have, then, not a "simple" presence but a tenacious, almost desperate vitality that uses the tools to available - bodies, sounds, sets, lights - to bring to life to a world connoted from an averbale sensibility. For Bourgeois, in fact, "Presence is the purpose, without end, of the work. It is also the reason for it. Early in my life I noticed that our condition as mortals was unbearable for me. The encounter with art was important because I experienced it as a way to resist death. In live art, where the substance at stake is also time passing, there is a tension toward immortality, toward the illusion of duration. Presence work therefore combats this illusion, and is its antidote."

The presence of moving sets that amplify the dimension of risk has the task of making the performers, their presence and, at the same time, the attention implied in the performance from part of everyone, both those who dance and those who watch the performance. In this sense, that is, from the perspective of an experience that deepens attention, one can also read the full synergy between the work of the choreographer and that of Hania Rani, a Polish pianist and composer who has written music that entertains a dialogic and sensitive relationship with the action.

Art does not find its meaning as a therapy for those who create it, but it certainly represents that space in which everyone can attempt to defeat their demons. In the hypnosis given by the repetition of movement lies the possibility of dissolving individualities, with all their bearing, and this process Yoann Bourgeois chooses to make it happen inside to a device that makes specific physical phenomena evident. In this case, the fall is the object of the artist's research. In other performances he has worked on centrifugal force, oscillation, and rotation. Space is, in fact, the first element summoned in creation. In Memory of to fall , this space is also that of the square, with the cathedral and its geometries, and not only that of the stage, with its device that, by installing itself, brings attention to the fulfillment of the creative process and to the object of study of the artistic research that supported it.

Moreover, in Bourgeois there is a trace of an idea of space where solitude and multitude meet. The square, the center of the polis, is a dimension that is present from the beginning: "I believe that space, in this historical moment, clearly determines the life of bodies, their relationships, connections. Of all the aspects that dance touches, space is the one that amplifies some salient elements of contemporaneity today." The synthesis of these instances is encapsulated in an idea of time as a fall, time that marks and leaves a trace, while memory is that dynamic element that sets in motion what happens, dynamizing presence through reverberations, echoes and references. In discussing his vision of time and space, Bourgeois confirms how, "Our relationship with space must be revolutionized if we are not to continue to destroying it. Art has a task, since it contributes to the construction of the imaginaries and fantasies of its own time." Bourgeois' work, which returns to Spoleto this year after presenting Tentative approaches to to point of suspension in 2022, offers the audience dense food for thought, but also the beauty of surprise, gesture and the finesse of choreographic construction when this is able, as in this case, to cross the threshold of wonder.