SNAPSHOTS

A SERIES OF FEMALE SOLOS PERFORMED BY WOMEN AND CHOREOGRAPHED BY CHRISTIAN AND FRANÇOIS BEN AÏM

This work creates a dialogue between intimate impulses and disruptive external forces. It unfolds like a fragmentary study of the things that constitute an identity, considered as matter in flux. Each solo is an opportunity to reveal a new form of energy that comes from beneath the surface, is unknown, and partly reserved. This study references the haiku, the poetry of instants. Through movement and action, the choreographers try to seize this immediate, fleeting emotion like a photographer captures a decisive

moment.

These short pieces, light forms for both stage and in situ performances, may be presented indoors or outdoors. The solos can exist independently and alone, or be grouped together in a configuration that adapts to each occasion and space. In time, this series of brief female portraits will form a mosaic, a kaleidoscope with multiple entry points and combinations.

The first solo, SNAPSHOTS #1 Anne-Flore de Rochambeau, is performed by Anne-Flore de Rochambeau, a choreographic artist who develops her work in Montreal.

For more than twenty years, Christian and François BEN AÏM have been building a work rich of poetry and high standards, fraternal bond and singularity.

At the end of a multidisciplinary training combining dance, physical theater and circus, each one follows his path as a performer, then the two brothers meet to create À l’abri du regard des hommes, avant d’aller mourir ailleurs, a hybrid dance-theater piece which marks the beginning of their collaboration in 1997. Twenty pieces will follow which anchor their fieldwork as much as they travel internationally. They draw their inspiration from literary, musical and pictorial sources, and intimately mixing artistic disciplines on the stage : En plein coeur (2006), Valse (2010), The Ogresse on archives and her dog (2011), Lightness of Storms (2014), Burn, rebellious hearts (2017), Mirages — boreal souls (2018), Arise (2019), JESTS (2021).

Marked by an uncompromising energy, summoning the performer to an intimate relationship with movement, the dance of the BEN AÏM brothers offers, beyond a speech, an experience, a "crossing" that the dancer performs in front of our eyes, that he lives each time with the sincerity of a full and entire presence.

With this demanding writing comes an art of composition which gives birth to the stage an imagination borrowing from dreams, from the marvelous of the tale and from invisible realities. Through a subtle effect of empathy, the audience enters an unstable world, where everything is the object of poetic questioning - a world to be experienced together.

Calendar of creations

2021

JESTS

2019

Snapshots - A series femal solos

Arise

2018

Mirages — Boreal souls

2017

Brûlent nos coeurs insoumis (Burn, rebellious hearts)

2016

Peuplé, dépeuplé (Inhabited, uninhabited)

2014

La légèreté des tempêtes

2013

La forêt ébouriffée (The Dense Forest)

L'orée des visages

Karma

2011

L'Ogresse des archives et son chien

2010

Valse en trois temps

Résistance au droit

2008

Louves

Amor fati fati amor

2007

You're a bird, now!

2006

En plein coeur

2004

Carcasses, un oeil pour deux

2003

Ne vous fiez pas au titre, il peut encore changer

2001

Ô my brother !

La Frontera

1999

Un homme en marche

L'enfant du miroir

1998

L'homme rapaillé

1997

A l'abri du regard des hommes, avant d'aller mourir ailleurs