Xavier Le Roy
Product of circumstances
http://www.xavierleroy.com/page.php?sp=b484c7a5657f9135a4743af6cf4b70a038ffd7f1&lg=en
PRODUCT OF OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES (2009)
From and by: Xavier Le Roy
Production: Le Kwatt
Coproduction: Le muse de la danse – Rennes
Thanks to: Boris Charmatz, PAF (performing arts forum)
In October 2009, after an email exchange (read here after), Xavier Le Roy created a performance titled Xavier makes someRebutoh. Resulting of a research done during the free time of the choreographer, this product could be qualified as being an amateur’s work.
Product of other circumstancesis the extension of this experience, it’s: a method of circumstances, a show as story telling, the narration of a work illustrated by attempts to get closer to, and to embody, a foreign dance using resources available to everybody such as internet, some books, as well as memories and anecdotes.
De :“Boris Charmatz” <borischarmatz@museedeladanse.org>
Date :25 juin 2009 15:35:54 GMT+02:00
À :<xavier.le.roy@free.fr>
Objet :ditfait
Hello,
One day you told me (we were talking about education): « to become a Butoh dancer you, need two hours ». I loved this sentence, even if you already forgot it (?). Since then (5 years?) I fantasized a performance from you that would challenged your words, I imagined that you would work 2 hours and perform a Butoh dance. What do you think? I know that you don’t do very often interventions off the cuff. But maybe…
… On the 24th of October I organize a day called « rebutoh » and maybe in this frame work you could do something starting from this sentence…
… but I ask very late. And I don’t know if that will be possible. What do you think?
Of course you can twist the proposal, react, … come with 15 performers… But I start with this phantasm and this conceptual object : « one day xavier told me……. » “to become a Butoh dancer you, need two hours » …
De : Xavier Le Roy <xavier.le.roy@free.fr>
Date :26 juin 2009 16:07:04 GMT+02:00
À : Boris Charmatz <borischarmatz@museedeladanse.org>
Objet :Rép : ditfait
Dear Boris,
I really say what ever non sense during our discussions, or maybe not? Lets see… If I really said this, I have to take responsibility for it. If I never said this, then, I think it’s a brilliant idea from you. Anyway I start to think about it. I know nothing about butoh so we will see. By miracle it seems that the 24th of October could work out, just one thing to move. Today there is the set up and rehearsal for “Le sacre” on top of the 3000 other activities of the festival In-presentable that we organize. So I don’t have time, but I will come back to this answer later…
Marten Spangberg about POOC:
“Product of Other Circumstancesis Xavier Le Roy’s latest attempt to cross the territory of dance and choreography. This time in the form of a performance, resonating of his legendary “Product of Circumstances“(1999), but this time, instead of starting with his on biography, he proceeds from a position of exile. For two hours the audience follows Le Roy on a journey into Butoh, a form of dance that he approaches as an amateur yet as a professional in the field of choreography.
Product of Other Circumstancesbrings forth the poetics of the body through a frame that allows for critical introspection and complexifies what expertise and knowledge in relation to the body signifies in our present society.”
Jan Ritsema about POOC :
What Xavier proofs with this Product of Other Circumstances is not that “to become a butoh dancer needs only two hours”, he fails dramatically, but the good news is that Xavier, dares to have this product of a method, this product of process, become in 2 hours a performance. As if he paid for his cheap arrogance towards Butoh with a rich modesty towards performance.
Bojana Cvejic about POOC :
In Product of Other Circumstances we aren’t only witness to butoh being a queer alibi for a kind of expression that Le Roy wouldn’t otherwise permit himself. More than a story about butoh with dancing, this performance offers a telling evidence of immaterial labor in performance. Speaking in first person, solo here isn’t yet another reflection of authorship or investigation of subjectivity. It’s a matter of constraint and circumstance. Faithful to a fantasy of someone else (aren’t we always?) and a cheap deal that allows work only as a hobby in unpaid time (but also vice versa), Le Roy devises a lateral pass at a subject he isn’t expert about: butoh, but it could’ve been just about anything else. Little become long hours this body takes, as well as passion into flexibility, to specialize.
Kai van Eikels about POOC :
“The performance that started with the somewhat dubitable claim that everybody can learn Butoh in two hours thus ends with another claim, equally funny, equally tempting to take it seriously nonetheless: That as an artist you can do art in your spare time and then it is still art but no longer work, and the money you get for it adds to your income without having had to be earned. This provokes questions that concern the relation between art and economy, artistic performance and work performance: Does art cease to be work where it deviates from the timetables of professional labor? Are there such timetables? Has the artist not been a role model for the economy precisely as somebody who knows no distinction between ‘work’ and ‘off-work,’ who is always ready to be inspired, ready to create, somebody for whom life in its entirety works as a practicing ground? Can a dance performer practice dance, another dance, as a hobby? Can an artist have a hobby at all? With the kind of freedom he enjoys to embrace anything, is he in a position to do something that will not become a part of his work?”
<borischarmatz@museedeladanse.org><xavier.le.roy@free.fr><xavier.le.roy@free.fr><borischarmatz@museedeladanse.org>