Where the rhythm of East meets the West

Cecile found herself drawn to the traditional dance form. Her love for Bharatnatyam only grew with each subsequent visit to the city, and she finally decided to combine Bharatnatyam and Contemporary dance into Histoires Vraies (True story). “I have been a contemporary dancer for 24 years now and started choreographing in 2000. I have created 16 original performances so far. 

However, I have never practised Barathanatyam myself. But I love how the dance holds so much power and portrays very deep delicateness at the same time. I started to think about Histoires Vraies when the director of the National Theatre of Orleans (France) proposed to me to build a choreographic project in Tamil Nadu,” says Cecile.

Histoires Vraies, which will be staged at  Phoenix Market City, tries to reinvent dance based on the different perspectives of the body in the two cultures and questions the origin of movement and its transmission. “In my work, in my dance, the questions of memories, transmission and histories are always present. 

So, it was important for me to start this project with the most famous traditional dance of India, which in itself carries the notion of transmission. We exchanged a lot of ideas during the creation of the piece. We talked about the differences in our dancing, of course, but we discussed the differences in how we talk about our dance. We discovered that even if we don’t share the same language, we have the same desire and necessity to be on stage,” she explains.

Two Indian dancers (Vijna Vasudevan and Renjith Babu) and two European dancers (Mai Ishiwata and Steven Hervouet) will present the choreography on stage. “ Histoires Vraies is really the story of a meeting, not a comparison between the two ways to move,” notes Steven Hervouet. 

The composer, Sylvain Chauveau, who composed original music for the performance says, “I wanted to compose a long composition that would run during the whole piece. I tried different kinds of music and found that a repetitive and hypnotic music which involves drums, bass, piano and organ would be the best. 

Not too dark and not too slow. I also noticed that two famous songs by American band, Pixies, worked strangely well with the Bharatnatyam dance. So, Cécile and I decided that I would sing one of the Pixies’ song, Monkey Gone To Heaven , over my own composition, live during the performance. 

The music also carries sound memories of Chennai I have as field recordings.”