“Mutating Score is conceived as a hybrid choreographic project, presented in the form of a structure which the public walk through. The composition process of this new project explored the possible relationships between dance, music and technological tools. Until now, we have been interested, along with composer Andrea Cera and video director Vincent Bosc, in using technology during the production process of the work. This time we have chosen to integrate it into the real time of the performance. It interacts with the dancers or the audience and so participates in different emotions and musical or visual mutations. The constantly evolving drama turns around three choreographic episodes worked on during the year 2004: Wave 01, Vaguely Light and Erasing Territory. The resemblance to a musical score of these three forms reveals a certain poetic tension which is inspired by waves and lightness. The particuliarity of the physical, musical, visual and even sculptural material invented during these three research and creative experiments, are to be found at work in the development of Mutating Score. This project investigates in generic terms the nature of how space is occupied, what is shown and represented, the ingredients which make up and transform it; but also, the place of the audience and its possible role in the construction of the story.

My rapport with new technology…

It is probably in exploring the role of the audience, and the relationship which this generates with the work, that technology has a part to play in new design experiments and in offering avenues of research.

By imagining the performance as an ecosystem, where the audience member is one of the constituent and active elements of the whole, a novel relationship between the audience and the work is created. In effect, requisitioning the performance area, one's interpretative and representative role, restores to the individual the capacity to be involved in and write an account of the event. This also obliges us to restructure the performance space, to reconsider how long the show needs to be, to have on stage at the same time confrontation, appropriation and transformation. A new object is forged and a new mutation comes into play. In such a setting, there are probably a number of technological tools that could be used, and others might need to be invented. My concern is that they should be used as a basic constituent of the nature of the artistic aim, and that they suggest possible new and sensitive links between the individual and the group.”

Source: Hervé Robbe

Born in Lille in 1961. After studying architecture for a few years, Hervé Robbe set his sights on dance. He was principally trained at Mudra, Maurice Béjart's school in Brussels. He began his performing career dancing the neo-classical repertoire, then went on to work with various modern dance makers.

In 1987 he founded his company: le Marietta secret.

The course of his career is clearly founded on a constant renewal of his choreographic writing. Supported by loyal artistic collaborators, his work has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, associating the dance presence with visual, sound and technological worlds. His projects, polysemic works, take many forms: frontal performance, ambulatory shows and installations.

The place of the audience, its presence and view is decisive; the stage space is regularly called into question.

His arrival at the CCN (National choreographic Centre) of Le Havre Haute-Normandie offered more opportunities for his research.

In 1999 he composed his autobiographical solo Polaroïd. Within it, video images of places associated with his childhood appear and coexist with an uninterrupted physical display.

In 2000 he explored the theme of home with Permis de construire – Avis de Démolition, a diptych consisting of an installation and a performance. He went on to tackle the theme of the garden in 2002 with Des Horizons Perdus.

In a world constructed with screens – virtual containers for the body, evokers of death – in the duet REW he engaged in a dialogue between man and woman on the theme of suicide. In 2004, with the group piece Mutating Score, he returned to the idea of the performance area being a common space occupied by both audience and dancers. This installation-dance, while reaffirming this conviction about the force of movement, marks the culmination of a project on the use of new technologies, which are integrated into the show in real time.

In 2006 he designed the installation So long as baby...love and songs will be, a kind of manifesto of the preoccupations which underlie his work. The device is a containing structure in which the audience is invited to watch and listen to the dancer-singers present on screen. Hervé Robbe distanced himself from the stage with this, then returned to it in the works Là, on y danse in 2007 and Next days in 2010.

While maintaining his personal approach in his own productions, he regularly accepts commissions from the Opéra de Lyon, the Gulbenkian Ballet, the CNSMDP (Paris Conservatoire) and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Source: Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre Haute-Normandie