The Other Me is a contemporary dance piece for two dancers. The creation embodies the way we develop our identity in relation to the "other", body, relation, person or a side of our selves. The "Me" is invented and re-built, confronted to its multiple temporalities. The body is seing as a moving entity which evolves and transforms over the course of the time, constantly rebuilding its image and the self.
The Other Me
Contemporary dance 30 min
Narrative body / Production 2021-2022
Choregraphy / Johanna Henritius
Scenography / Claire Camous
Dance / Chloé Hennemann, Claire Camous
Artist-in-residency: L'Entre-Pont, Le 109, Studio Antipodes, Le Volatil, Les 8 Pillards, KLAP Maison pour la danse, Arsud
Video teaser / Youri Cayron, Photo Vanessa Trojani
There has been a few changes in my life that have made me wanna step back and look at movement from a different point of view. The first being the decision to create this duo as a choreographer, and not as a "dancer-choreographer". The second is me becoming a mother. As a new parent I got interested in understanding the way we become individuals and construct our internal selves; Building a narrative of the "I" is actually a life long process that starts early in our childhood. A new-born baby does not recognize itself as a different being, but relates itself to the mother. As the baby learns to move, it gains understanding of its body and environment, slowly gaining new experiences and nursing the development of his subjectivity. In order for a baby to walk and run, he needs to be able to let go of the mother; a sometimes difficult and emotional passage on their way to independency. As adults, when we face big changes like some of us did during the pandemic, we also need time to change and to adapt to new situations. Even when we are wiling to change, we find ourselves having constant battles with our minds, as we are moving away from the things we know and consider safe. Our body, the physical shell of our experiences, is not separated from the remembered self, but it all acts as a whole; making it sometimes hard to juggle between the past, the present and the future.
Unique space and a visual representation of the narrative self
Claire Camous, dancer and visual artist, works on the reinvention of recycled paper creating sustainable art in different forms. For The Other Me, hundreds of "galets"/"rocks" were designed in white, gray and black tones, representing the different nuances and phases in our personal development. Manipulating and reinventing the material was an important part of the process, as we searched for ways for the decor to transform at the same time as the bodies on stage.
Le “Me” (moi), s’invente et se transforme, se confronte à son moi-multiple, temporel; Une entité mouvante qui se transforme au fil des récits, ne cessant de reconstruire son image en permanence.
The Other Me est une pièce de danse contemporaine créée pour deux femmes, qui explore notre identité narrative et cherche à tisser des liens entre le mouvement et la création plastique. Pour la scénographie de The Other Me, l'artiste plasticienne Claire Camous travaille sur la manipulation du papier pour créer des centaines de "galets", qui recouvrent la surface scénique, sans cesse ré- agencés, au grès des lieux et des atmosphères : Ce que j’appelle «les galets» sont des modules en papier recyclé, juxtaposables et combinables. Élaborés en série, ils soulignent et mettent en valeur à la fois leurs similitudes et leurs singularités. Seuls, ils sont symboliques. Accumulés, ils deviennent un jeu de lignes, de couleurs et de contrastes simultanés.