Boris Charmatz [terrain]

At Triennale Milano + via live stream

Triennale Milano and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain are presenting 20 Dancers for the XXth Century and More by the French choreographer Boris Charmatz as part of their partnership. This is a proposition by the Nomadic Nights for the exhibition Les Citoyens, Guillermo Kuitca on the collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain at Triennale Milano.

Conception: Boris Charmatz

Production and distribution: [terrain]
A production of the Musée de la Danse / Centre Chorégraphique National de Rennes et de Bretagne (2012).

With: Djino Alolo Sabin, Boglárka Börcsök, Ashley Chen, Marco D’Agostin, Raphaëlle Delaunay, Olga Dukhovnaya, Bryana Fritz, Néstor García Díaz, Felipe Lourenço, Fabrice Mazliah, Julien Monty, Benjamin Pech, Soa Ratsifandrihana, Marlène Saldana, Manon Santkin, Cristina Saso, Elisabeth Schwartz, Asha Thomas, Claudia Triozzi and Frank Willens

Live stream director: César Vayssié
Live stream producer: Fondation Cartier Nomadic Nights, [terrain], A_FE

Invited by the Fondation Cartier as part of the exhibition Les Citoyens, Guillermo Kuitca on the collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain currently on show at Triennale Milano, the dancer and choreographer Boris Charmatz is presenting his project 20 Dancers for the 20th Century and even more on all of the levels of the magnificent Palazzo dell’Arte in Milan – from the exhibition rooms to the theatre, from the atrium to the Salone d’Onore – a remarkable event to experience in situ or watch via live stream.

A major figure on the contemporary choreography scene, Charmatz enjoys moving dance off the stage and occupying public spaces. After the Opéra de Paris, the Tate Modern in London and the MoMA in New York, he is now taking 20 Dancers for the 20th Century and even more to Triennale Milano. This performance-exhibition presents a living, invigorating dance archive in which all styles mingle, from the last century to today.

“Dancers’ bodies are a museum, an archival site. They are a site of memory. Works must be continually reinvented.” Boris Charmatz

Spread over all levels of Triennale Milano, twenty dancers reinterpret and appropriate famous solos, acclaimed or forgotten, by modern and postmodern artists. Audiences wander freely through this imaginary dance collection, encountered along a hallway, up a staircase or in an exhibition room. From the avant-gardes to the Ballets Russes, traditional dances to film choreographies, the history of dance is broadly celebrated here. Each person can freely reconstitute their own living archive, plural and non-linear, to make connections and expand their collection of gestures.

A Nomadic Night to watch via live stream as well:

The Fondation Cartier and [terrain] have invited César Vayssié, director and longtime collaborator of Charmatz, to film this one-time performance live. Vayssié slips into the audience and proposes his own random and subjective wander through the performance 20 Dancers for the 20th Century and even more at Triennale Milano.

Boris Charmatz

Dancer, choreographer, creator of experimental projects, director of the Musée de la Danse from 2009 to 2018 and of [terrain] since 2019, Boris Charmatz is one of the major figures of the French contemporary choreography scene. From À bras-le-corps (1993) to La Ronde (2021), he has created a series of landmark pieces in parallel with his activities as a performer and improviser (notably with Médéric Collignon, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Tino Sehgal). He is also the author of several books, including Je suis une École in 2009 and EMAILS 2009-2010 in 2013, co-authored with Jérôme Bel. In 2017, the MoMA (New York) published the monograph Boris Charmatz, edited by Ana Janevski and featuring contributions from a number of artists and writers. In 2021, Charmatz created La Ronde as part of the event Avant-travaux, le Grand Palais invite Boris Charmatz. This project was the subject of a new documentary and film broadcast on France 5. In June 2021, he orchestrated a performance for 130 dancers, Happening Tempête, for the opening of the Grand Palais Éphémère.

To read:

• Choreographer Boris Charmatz tells how the performance 20 Dancers for the XX Century is born