The Waves explores the various ways in which gestures suggest bodily experiences by expanding the research at the heart of my previous pieces. Movement on Movement was focused on gestures that explain or comment other movements. Removing transformed the perception of goal-oriented actions such as hitting, avoiding, throwing or grabbing, by preventing the audience to recognize these goals. For example, the dancers aimed at imaginary objects or interrupted their actions before they were completed, thus allowing the spectator to experience aspects of the action that would remain unnoticed if its goal would have been identified. Faits et gestes continued these experiments and added an exploration of the ways in which a gesture can recall the feeling of executing a movement: dancers created gestures that expressed their experience when executing another movement. All these projects are rooted in the intuition that a gesture that explains or suggests a movement can often communicate better what is at stake in this movement. In this new piece, I would like to pursue and expand this exploration of the ways in which a movement can refer to another movement: symbols, hints, suggestions, schemata, sketches, comments, explanations, experiential correspondences…

Complex experiences can be associated with bodily movements and physical attitudes. The gestures on which we are working are always incomplete, they point to something beyond themselves, and I have the feeling that this incompleteness can allow them to recall these complex experiences associated with movements. A sudden change of direction, a shift in the gaze of the performer, the effort to divert the momentum from a previous moment or to maintain one’s balance can be used as supports to project complex physical and psychological memories. I do not mean that the spectator will be reminded of a specific episode of his life, but that the specific character of the gestures created by referring to another movement can activate his own bodily memory with all its physical and psychological ramifications. The incompleteness of the gestures thus aims to set in motion the physical history of the viewer.