Somnole
Boris Charmatz
In 2023, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels reinforces its support to Boris Charmatz for SOMNOLE. After committing to the creation of this show in 2021, the initiative is now accompanying its presentation with the Centre Pompidou-Metz, as well as part of Romaeuropa Festival, and collaborates with NYU Skirball as part of the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival in New York.
Boris Charmatz explores the idea of somnolence - the feeling of being on the brink of sleep. After a series of group performances and collective events, and in contrast to his work infini, he explores the minimalist format of the dance solo.
Accompanied only by the sheer sound of whistling, melodies surface, blend and break apart. The relationship between the sound and the movement is in turn deliberate, halting, drowsy and acute.
SOMNOLE is a vaporous dance that unites familiar melodies and slumberous gestures. Like a body seeking sleep, Boris Charmatz invents an insomniac dance, a refuge of rhythms and refrains at the frontier between wakefulness and sleep.
Whistling for yourself, is “like a rough sketch of a steady center in the heart of chaos…” modeling movement in tune with the breath floating from your lips. Inventing your own ever-expanding world – a land of familiar refrains that give way to gestures; whistling a note, forging a melody, then another – like a fleeting map of a state of mind. Following from infini, a show overflowing with orality in which numbers, put into words, flowed from body to body, Boris Charmatz executes a radical slimming of the senses and physical activity. In SOMNOLE, the air escaping in a whistle connects with materializing movement, tenuously interweaving dance and music. As melodies surface, blend and break apart, different states of attachment develop between the sound and the physical dynamics – in turns deliberate, halting, sleepy and acute. Like a body seeking sleep, Boris Charmatz invents an insomniac dance, a refuge of rhythms and refrains at the frontier between waking dreams and opaque reverie.
Gilles Almavi for the Festival d’Automne à Paris, 2021.
Boris Charmatz
In 2026, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting the upcoming creation of Boris Charmatz.
About the partner
Centre Pompidou-Metz
In 2025, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels support to the Centre Pompidou-Metz for the presentation of Solo Improvisation and the workshop Cercles by Boris Charmatz.
Éclairages
