LEX flaunts the codes of contemporary dance, even going as far as auctioning off the four performers at the end of the show! The piece aims to explore the backstage of the show, to dissect laws and mechanisms with irony and amusement. We watch, for example, a long series of filmed auditions of dancers, one of whom says that their “father is the director of the Théâtre de la Ville”, another who says they are “up for anything”, etc.

Then, through a series of imposed exercises, the four dancers take turns to play at being the most moving, the most beautiful, the most physical, etc.

The development process of the show here is designed as a critical act of artistic production, where the laws of the show are called into question.

The piece exhibits its own mechanisms, its own underbelly, everything that usually remains hidden from the eyes of the spectator. LEX is therefore both an exhibition of the production 'secrets' of a piece and a 'real piece'.

This initiative turns out to be a joyful one, which derides the easy, hackneyed rhetoric of contemporary dance.

More information: milleplateauxassocies.com

Updating: July 2014

Choreographer, performer and researcher of dance, Geisha Fontaine began her career as a ballet dancer, then trained under Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais in New York and Hideyuki Yano in Paris. She then set up the centre de danse contemporaine (Centre for Contemporary Dance) Le Dansoir in Toulouse and worked as a dancer for several contemporary dance companies. In 1998, she founded the Mille Plateaux Associés dance company with Pierre Cottreau. She was the winner of the Villa Médicis – Hors les murs residence in Japan in 2010.

Awarded her art PhD from the Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Geisha Fontaine was published by the Centre national de la danse (National Dance Centre) in 2004 (a book which has been translated into Spanish and Japanese), while “Tu es le danseur”, 2008 and “Là”, 2009, were published by Micadanses. She has collaborated on several joint publications, notably those published by CNRS. She is invited regularly as an artist and a researcher to various universities in France and abroad (Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Santiago…).

Further information

Mille plateaux associés website

Updated : june 2013