DD DORVILLIER
human future dance corps
Landscape Stories (2023-2024)
site-specific group performances in Campan, Merri, and Versailles, France.

Courtaou d'Artigussy, Vallée de Campan, July 2023 © DD Dorvillier
From a vantage point overlooking the ancient courtaou of Artigussy and the Gaoube rivulet, it's possible to see someone disappear into the distance in broad daylight. It's a crossroads where numerous hiking trails blur into the pasture and intersect at the foot of the ruins of the shepherd's hut, not far from a gully and its laytés.
Landscape Stories is a site-specific dance performance that journeys between and connects three very different sites: the ancient “courtaou” of Artigussy in the Campan Valley (Hautes-Pyrénées), the Potager du Roi (Versailles), and the Celtic Camp of Bierre (Commune de Merri in Normandy).
These sites share remarkable archaeological, biological and cultural histories, as well as a visual and spatial amplitude that makes it possible to play with perspective and scale. Through the exploration of these places, and through meetings, visits, and interviews with people who are passionate about them and committed to their preservation, a rich sedimentation of experiences has been developing and leading to a performative form that adapts itself to each of the sites.
In Landscape Stories, gesture, sound, color and language reverberate in the landscape. The audience's ears and eyes follow the four performers' movements, the paths of sound, the contours and detours of the site. The result is a concert of appearances, disappearances, echoes, shadows and playful doubles.
A series of dance scores emerged from a dream after practices and writings during studio sessions and site visits. After naming and describing the dances from the inside, and writing them, I understood that they were familiar to me, but also different, and would not have emerged but for the site visits, interviews, and group practices that took place prior to this dreaming.
The scores are practices can be used as research tools, and they are choreographic. We have been developing them with the resonances of the three outdoor sites in mind. At each iteration of the work the idea is to structure the content in dialogue with the site. The performers each learn the same sequence as a solo, and then dance this solo as an overlapping and consecutive canon together, so that at some point there may be only one dancer dancing, joined later by another then a third...
This material is also the springboard for a new solo work Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone.
Concept, performer DD Dorvillier
Collaborating artists/performers Agnès Benoît, Damien Briançon, France Cartigny
Sound installation Sébastien Roux
Flags and costumes Paul Andriamanana
Artistic collaborator, video Mathieu Bouvier
Collaborator, intern Maren Weertman
Production Laura Aknin
Performances
October 21, 2023, TRAVERSE – Artigussy, Vallée de Campan
May 26, 2024, Festival Danse de tous les Sens – Camp Celtique de Bierre, Merri
September 8, 2024 Festival Plastique Danse Flore – Jardin Balbi, Versailles
Production DD Dorvillier / human future dance corps
Partners Nos lieux communs – programme Nomades, La Place de la Danse CDCN Toulouse, CDCN Chorège – Falaise, Plastique Danse Flore, Traverse, DRAC Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Région Bourgogne Franche-Comté