The twofold education of Xavier Le Roy —  in molecular biology and contemporary dance — has often meant that he  has attracted the atypical description of a “scientific” dancer. Invited  for this reason to present a talk about the relationships between art  and science, as part of the Body Currency event at the Vienna  Festival in 1998, he took the opportunity to go back over his arrival in  the world of dance, while humorously misappropriating university codes  of address. His presentation, Produit de circonstances, is a  performed autobiography, during which his own body becomes the  reflection of a social, political and cultural organisation, whose  hierarchies he intends to deconstruct. Sensitive to the influence of  systems of control, common to dance studios, the public space as well as  scientific laboratories, his embodied discourse acts as a resolutely  critical practice which attempts to free itself from the conventions of  the spectacle so as redefine the circumstances that make it possible.

Circumstances: "I  began to take two dance classes a week at the same time that I started  to work on my thesis for my Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology.  It’s been now eight years that I have submitted my thesis and stopped to  work as a biologist. Since I work as a dancer or choreograph I am very  often presented as an atypical dancer or as a dancer molecular  biologist. It became my currency in the "Society of the Spectacle". I  was invited to prepare and present a lecture for an event on theory and  praxis in performance ("Body currency" Wiener Festwochen June ‘98)..."

Product: Biography  as theory. An autobiographical conference becoming a performance. My  body as raw material of social and cultural organization and as the  practice of critical necessity.

Press extract

Marija Krtolica  About Product of Circumstances (1999) – NYC September 2011
Although  Le Roy’s work is often humorous, it invites serious investigations of  the subject in relationship to the apparatuses of control within the  scientific environment, in dance studios, and everyday public areas.   The explicit choreographic statements are followed by the  understatements. These latent meanings instigate the viewer to register  the projections appearing in the interstices between hierarchies, needs  and desires, produced as well as obscured  by the dominant structures.   Le Roy’s performance is a space of philosophical investigations which  through micro actions perform subtle subversion of hierarchical  organizational forms. These performative acts inspire awareness of the  ways that hierarchies manifest themselves in the society today, and of  the complex of rationalizations that give those manifestations support.
Source: website of Xavier Le Roy
 

Xavier Le Roy holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the  University of Montpellier, France, and has worked as artist since 1991.  Since 2018 works as Professor at the Institute for Applied Theater  Studies in Giessen (Germany). He has performed with diverse companies  and choreographers. From 1996 to 2003, he was artist-in-residence at the  Podewil in Berlin. In 2007-2008 he was “Associated Artist”at Centre  Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, France. In 2010 Le Roy is an  Artist in Residence fellow at the MIT Program in Art Culture and  Technology (Cambridge, MA). In 2012, he begins a 3 years residency at  Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris. Through his solo works such as  « Self Unfinished (1998) » and « Product of Circumstances (1999) », he  has opened new perspectives in the field of choreography.

At the same time, he initiated projects exploring the modes of  production and collaboration in group works: "E.X.T.E.N.S.I.O.N.S."  (1999-2000), "Project" (2003) and "6 Months 1 Location" (2008).
His  works such as the soli "Le Sacre du Printemps" (2007), "Untitled"  (2014), the group piece "low pieces" (2011), and works for exhibition  spaces such as "production" (2011) created together with Mårten  Spångberg, "Untitled" (2012) for the exhibition 12 Rooms,  "Retrospective" first realized in 2012 at the Tapiès  Foundation-Barcelona, "Temporary Title, 2015" created at Sydney in the  frame of John Kaldor Public Art Project or "For The Unfaithful Replica"  (2016) in collaboration with Scarlet Yu at CA2M Madrid; produce  situations that explore the relationships between spectactors / visitors  / performers and the production of subjectivities.

His works produce situations that question, the relationships between  spectators/visitors and performers and are attempt to transform or  reconfigure dichotomies such as: object / subject, animal / human,  machine / human, nature / culture, public / private, form / unform.

In 2017, together with Ensemble Issho Ni they create for the Ensemble  Modern in Frankfurt: the exhibition "Haben Sie "Modern" gesagt?", and  he developped, together with Scarlet Yu, "Still Untitled", a work for  public spaces commissioned by Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017.

Source: Xavier Leroy website

More information: www.xavierleroy.com/

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).