Mathilde Monnier

Certain experiences do not pass us by without leaving a trace, and many memories remain for a long time under our skin and in our memories. In Records Mathilde Monnier converts the traces of the pandemic and the lockdown into a piece where the body not only remembers, but simultaneously reveals things, similar to a therapeutic experience, commenting on them and abstracting them. Six dancers and a wall – and we already are in an initial pandemic situation that we all know too well: on the one hand, the impression of being trapped in one's own four walls, and on the other hand, the feeling of security and tenancy. But not only will withdrawal and loneliness become visible here – one waits and rages, plays and fools around, and the borders between humor and insanity are blurred. The six dancers do not want to accept the emptiness of the space as an inner emptiness, and they mutually produce rhythms through glances and contact zones through the use of their voices. What remains after the manic effervescence is a new turn towards searching for one another.

Mathilde Monnier is an important reference point for the international contemporary world of dance and a choreographer who constantly trusts herself to try something new, to question dance itself – perhaps that is the reason why in her works dance seems to be a part of life. She not only has created over 40 choreographic works, which have received many awards, but she was also the director of important institutions and thus formed dance beyond her own work. In the mid-1990s she became the artistic director of Centre Chorégraphique National in Montpellier, where for over 20 years she placed a special emphasis on the collaboration between very different disciplines and personalities in art. Following her time from 2013 to 2019 as the director of Centre National de la Danse, located in Pantin and Lyon, she returned to creating her own artistic works, and she has been based with her company at the culture center La Halle Tropisme in Montpellier since 2020.

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