The artist wants to enhance the project and adapt it for the stage so that it can be performed in 2023-2024. La Criée centre d'art contemporain is supporting her in an initial research phase in Rennes, consisting of a week of rehearsals with four dancers, a week of writing and adaptation, and then a period dedicated to creating the sound and light show, which will take place later in the year.
Batailles nocturnes (Night Battles) is a tribute to free parties (fêtes sauvages) and resistant marginal dances, a modern ritual following in the tradition of collective floor dances to ward off evil spells. Built as a project in an anachronistic dialogue between Carlo Ginzburg's eponymous text and contemporary accounts of real or dreamlike dancefloors, Batailles nocturnes becomes the common ground for free dancers of yesterday and today.
-- Batailles nocturnes is a dancefloor, a fertile and resistant dance floor,
-- Batailles nocturnes is a hybrid, collective, magical ritual,
-- Batailles nocturnes, a new creation, sits at the intersection of choreographic performance, experimental concert, and sound documentary, all articulated through a reflection on the role of marginal dances in times of crisis (techno clubs, wild parties in urban and rural peripheries, parties in ZAD (zones to defend) ) and the survival of pre-capitalist rituals to ward off evil spells
Batailles nocturnes is part of the ancient and necessary tradition of collective dancing and resistant bodies, because, let it be said, the battle continues and, despite fatigue, we will never let ourselves be defeated.
Initially, it's a silent dancefloor that is presented, a nomadic highlighting of bodies in movement and an encounter with each of the dancers present. A voice rises, repeating the words of the Benandanti, those who go for good, members of an Italian feudal community who fought, at night, in their sleep, for the fertility of crops and the defeat of evil forces on the soils and bodies.
Gradually, breaths become discernible. The ensemble of bodies generates a sound material mixed live by Meryll Ampe, sound artist, between minimal techno and archaic sonic massage. Mixed in are accounts of choreic epidemics, repressions of dancing bodies, militant testimonies of the dancers present. Bodies accelerate, stop, sometimes meet, between therapeutic act and collective movement. Then, perhaps, those who, until now, were witnesses to this strange ritual, will also let themselves tread the ground beneath their feet.
A publication is given to those present, like a tool for times to come, combining the referenced texts, conducted interviews, collected words, and the silent playlists that animate the dancers. This publication thus not only documents the research creation that is Batailles nocturness but primarily aims to stretch the experience, to turn every living room, bedroom, car into training spaces for the battles to be fought, where each person's pieces of courage resonate.
Depending on the activation spaces, Batailles nocturnes is performed either as a sound and choreographic piece of about an hour, or in a longer format that transforms into a collective dancefloor following the performance.