Françoise Letellier's proposal to invite Hervé Robbe to create a piece for the Festival d'Avignon 92, with the accent on the relationship between music and dance, came at a time when the company was embarking upon a collaboration with the Sextuor à Cordes (String Sextet) of the A.I.E.C. (Contemporary Expression Instrumental Workshop).
In keeping with the theme of this project, we commissioned a work from composer Costin Miereanu. The relationship between music and dance is played out in the perspective of a reflection on the stage composition. The six musicians create a dramatic event and the staging integrates the sound space. Outside of this musical dimension, the team's preoccupation is to re-centre the intention of the dance in the body.
The Renaissance humanist Andreas Vesalius's anatomical work “De humani corpis fabrica” (On the fabric of the human body) captivated Hervé Robbe with its twin perception of the human body:
- a baroque and artistic perception revealed by anatomical iconography, which tries to sublimate reality and tame the idea of death by putting the écorchés in Mannerist poses.
The gestural and choreographic research was inspired by the complementary nature of the methodology and iconography in this work: body-system/body-passion.
The eventual aim is to go beyond all systems to affirm the supremacy of an expression by the body and specific to it.

Source: Centre National Chorégraphique du Havre Haute-Normandie

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