Nuée
Emmanuelle Huynh
In 2021, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting Nuée, Emmanuelle Huynh's new creation, presented as part of the Festival d’Automne à Paris 2021.
The nimbus is a form and a body – gaseous, solid, liquid: a waterlogged atmospheric formation, retention and overflow; a pressure zone that can become electrically charged, melt into rain, burst into a thunderstorm. Water, electricity, forms, accumulation, disappearance: the nimbus is a body, a name, a legacy and a question.
Drawing from the succession of images, genealogies and enigmas enshrouded within this name (that of her father Huynh Thanh Vân, meaning “Blue Cloud”), a link between two worlds – Vietnam and France – Emmanuelle Huynh launched an investigation directed at once within and outside herself: an inquiry made up of points, dots, following a path as invisible and sinuous as that of acupuncture meridians – in search of the lines of force that structure her dancer’s body.
Inspired by images and questions regarding her father’ name – Huynh Thanh Vân, Blue Cloud – Emmanuelle Huynh set out to discover the substantive essence behind her dancer’s body.
Through her research, she charts a narrow fault line between Vietnam and France, plotting a course along this personal frontier to understand its outline, its points of reference, its intersections – all the while directing her gestures to the multitude of voices and bodies she carries within her. Nuée also outlines a map upon which energies and recollections flow, forming sentences in her mouth, through her limbs, on her skin. A hybrid land emerges where her body meets the stage – reminiscent of Chris Marker’s “uncountry.” Sculpted by light and fog, Emmanuelle Huynh’s frame effects a compression of states and symbols, like so many physical ideograms kneaded by her memory.
Expropriating the concept of “destinerrance,” developed by Jacques Derrida to express the uncertain destination of any utterance, she disperses bearings, transmits signs and scatters a certain “self-image” into an archipelago of otherness.
Gilles Almavi for the Festival d’Automne à Paris, 2021.
Emmanuelle Huynh
In 2025, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting Emmanuelle Huynh for the creation of unedansecontinue and Chaillot-Théâtre national de la Danse for the presentation of Múa.
About the partner
Festival d'Automne à Paris
In 2025, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is renewing its support for the Festival d’Automne to present 14 artistic works. A major sponsor since 2020, Dance Reflections is also committed to supporting the Festival in its solidarity initiatives in Paris and the Île-de-France region.
