Yoann Bourgeois
The anatomy of my fall is in the dance
than Anna Bandettini — Friday
The artist, star of social networks and visualizations with shows that choreograph the challenge to the force of gravity, returns to the Festival of Two Worlds with his new work Memory of a Fall: “How lucky to have attended the circus.”
It will be hard to resist the flicker, the sense of vertigo but also the wonder that this incredible artist arouses when he dances on dangerously inclined swivel platforms, or when he falls down the steps of a staircase without a parapet and immediately returns up, as if he were without gravity. Daredevil, concrete, poetic, Yoann Bourgeois, a French acrobat and choreographer, experiences dance as a fall, instability, imbalance. “My goal is to discover the unheard of,” he says, and so he has gained not only thousands of followers on Instagram and millions of views on social networks with his works Escapes/Trampoline (2008) and Celui qui tombe (2014), but also fashion stars (Vuitton) and rock-pop, from Coldplay to Selena Gomez, Harry Styles who has made him dance in various videos, including Marco Mengoni for whom he signed the Eurovision 2023 performance.
Bourgeois's latest creation is entitled Memory of a Fall and it debuts on July 6 in Piazza Duomo in Spoleto, where he has already been a guest in the years always spent at the Festival of Two Worlds. “This show,” explains Yoann, 42, next to his wife Marie, who is an artist of the company founded in 2010, “was born from the encounter with the composer Hania Rani. We had an exchange during Milan Fashion Week last September and I immediately felt the aesthetic potential that connected our two worlds. Hania, Polish, is an insatiable artist, whose aesthetic hybridity is unique: timeless, hypnotic, but with a sense of musicality that makes her popular. For Memory of a Fall, sings, uses pianos, electronics, acoustics for a minimalist composition like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, but with more melody. It is an experience, and I believe that ours is primarily a metaphysical encounter.
The show, however, is very physical. What is it about?
“All my work stems from the stage device that guides us to new physics, new relationships between us. Here is an impressive horizontal structure that I designed like all the others, and which curves and becomes vertical up to 6 meters high. From there, the ten dancers let themselves fall. The choreography is built on this movement. Why? The fall is directly connected to gravity, which is the drama of the universe. Gravity pushes towards the abyss, and it's a bit of a death. My work seeks an alternative, through what I call the unattainable suspension point.”
And what is it?
A crossroads, the instant, absolute moment in which the weight disappears. It is the body in which intensity vibrates, the quality of presence that allows you to resist gravity, even if only for an instant. It is a moment of resistance to death, a small window open to eternity that does not mean immortality, because the pyramids of Egypt, for example, are eternal but sooner or later they will turn to dust. In this, mine is an existential research, rather than an artistic one.”
Do you train a lot for this?
“No, there's no real training. I practice hiking. And more than dancing, I am attracted to extreme sports.”
Are your roots in circus art?
“I was, I think, the only student to attend both circus and dance schools at the same time. My relationship with the circus is a long story. When I was a child my parents separated and sold the house to Le Cirque Plume, the group that created Nouveau Cirque. From there, the circus was perhaps a way not to lose the child that I was, to put the game at the center of my life. The circus made me understand that all disciplines contribute to nameless art, which is the most beautiful of all: the art of living.”
Were you inspired by anyone for this artistic 'philosophy'?
“My first reference is the wonderful amazement of contemplating nature. The mountains, and when I say mountains I mean their disproportion. I live among the peaks of the Chartreuse Massif, in the French Alps and there you have the feeling that everything that surrounds us is not on a human scale, it is an unprecedented space. It's poetry that helps you breathe.”
And what place do social networks have in this poem?
“I only frequent Instagram as a small laboratory for experimenting with videos. I know I have a lot of followers: I'm not looking for them, but with the artificialization of reality, people want to reconnect to their feelings. And I hope our work will produce this.”
Is this also the case with music? How did it go with Mengoni?
“I didn't want my work to stay in a small box. And rock has a large and young audience. I have been looked for by various musicians, even by Marco, who is a really passionate person, eager to perform and to communicate.”
She also seems to have this same passion.
“I see that the world is changing rapidly and I want to do my part, with passion. We need to give answers to our irresponsibility towards the environment and the art that transforms imaginaries is a first step to change. When we talk about ecological issues, we often do so from a restrictive perspective only. I think that in order to change, we should, without being afraid to use this word, sanctify our relationship with nature and with humanity. That's what I want to say with my work.”