Boris Charmatz x 100

In 2019, to mark the centenary of Merce Cunningham’s birth, the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (CNSMDP), La Villette and the Festival d’Automne in Paris launched an ambitious partnership: a score created for some one hundred students around Cunningham’s repertoire. The project has since continued with major figures of American dance such as Trisha Brown and Lucinda Childs, exploring new territory with each edition. 

This year, Boris Charmatz, who was trained at the Conservatoire de Lyon, takes on this unique format. For the choreographer of Levée des conflits and Happening Tempête—conceived for a hundred performers—working with an abundance of gestures and a community of bodies means transmitting an energy, a vital force that runs through everyone. Drawing on excerpts of his own pieces, such as 10000 gestes and Liberté Cathédrale, Boris Charmatz and the students of the CNSMDP unfold a protean score of movements, voices and states of being, revealing the singularity of each body within the collective.