Sur le fil

Sur le fil is an attempt to escape from oneself, via an infinite acceptation and a going beyond of the frontiers of the body. The choreographer Nacera Belaza preceeds her emblematic piece with a reduction, for children from the Bobigny neighbourhood and Paris. From adult to child, professional to amateur, what do we see in this gesture?

While she was a child, Nacera Belaza felt an undying need to dance alone, in secret. Since then, the choreographer has never taken her eyes off "the shorelines of childhood", adjusting the conditions of each dazzling gesture with infinite exigency, and radical generosity. In returning to the piece she created in 2016, she continues, via the detour it provides her with, to trace and hollow this same line, and to search for "the means by which we can escape from ourselves". The resulting dance does not show itself, it is a state. A state which takes us to the edges of our being, anchored in the body and the imaginary, and to which the uninhibited gaze of childhood, close to the invisible, still has access. The choreographer shares this extreme receptivity with a handful of very special performers, in this instance Dalila Belaza and Aurélie Berland. In a dark space outlined by light, we might see children at the origins of dance, turning and spiraling until others, older than them, take their place and the emptiness persists.

Text : © Mélanie Jouen

Photo: © Claudia Pajewski