Sigrid Vinks invited by Boris Charmatz.
Saturday 16 January 2021 – full day
La Ronde – danced duets from dawn to dusk
“Arthur Schnitzler wrote the extraordinary La Ronde, about couples bound to one another, at the same time that the Grand Palais was being built. In 1900 the venue opened and Schnitzler self-published his work, which caused a scandal due to its sexual themes – or perhaps, because the author was Jewish.
It shifted the focus from the figure of the couple to an endless exploration of the chain that moves bodies, pierces them. Schnitzler talks candidly about love and sex between figures of society (actresses, soldiers, prostitutes, counts, etc.). He invents a protocol of desire that is permeable, passed on and transmitted to the other, sometimes under tension, and without harmony.
The dramaturgy of the book forms a dance in itself, where the couples never fully come back together, instead constantly encountering others.
The Grand Palais is an unmeasurable space for which it is difficult to imagine any half-measures. We can either unleash a tempest attended by 6,000 people or see it as a case into which we delicately place a prosaic jewel: an infinite chain of dancing, singing, talking twosomes.
Bodies move, collide, embrace, leave one another yet stay, bound together in the mental space, taking root to maintain a continuity of desire and the living.
I imagine a series of set couples, a landscape of dancing, talking, singing duets, with extraordinary artists, who hang on to time to maintain this home for several hours.
Iconic pieces from History (from Don Quixote to Dirty Dancing via Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker), duets invented for the occasion, excerpts from Schnitzler, artists who open up the senses and entice visitors. An event whose duration will be embraced by all, performers and audience alike, in a long and gentle choreographic blaze of shared emotion.”
Boris Charmatz