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En français

Returning to Melbourne, where he has not appeared since 2009, the French choreographer Xavier Le Roy is the special guest of a surprising program from Dancehouse. Named Xavier Le Roy_in public and curated specifically for Le Roy, this program will run from 27 November to 12 December 2015, with a wide range of events allowing the audience to meet this world-renowned choreographer who is considered one of the most innovative of his time.

The presence of Le Roy in Melbourne is a definite master stroke for Dancehouse, this “Centre for independent contemporary dance companies” being the only one of its kind in the Australian performing arts scene.

One of the highlights of this program dedicated to this choreographer will be without doubt Le Roy’s mythical solo performance, Self Unfinished, created in 1998 and widely performed in Europe and throughout the world. In issue 18 of the French magazine “Mouvement”, the highly acclaimed American choreographer William Forsythe said of Le Roy and his solo work:  “Let me use the example of another choreographer: Xavier Le Roy. The way he moves goes beyond words. Take for example his famous solo, Self Unfinished. He draws attention to the isomorphism of the body's extremities. He bends his body in such a way that it is clearly understood that it possesses a cellular story. His work has allowed me to understand that it is something miraculous that we have a head on top of our shoulders and our feet underneath our hips... And so, in this fully conscious and deliberate way, he has escaped the isomorphic possibilities of the human body. At the end of the show, he reforms the human body into its little known shape. And I felt he offered us the chance to witness the process of creation, because the majority of creation is found at a biological level. We come to this precise moment where what could be said isn’t technical: it is just obvious to the body. Xavier Le Roy's choreography displays an evolution of the body that is self-evident”.

Xavier Le Roy _ in public is a Creative Dialogues joint initiative of the French Embassy in Australia, MPavilion, The Victorian College of the Arts (University of Melbourne), ACMI and the Alliance Française Melbourne led by Dancehouse, with special thanks to Kaldor Public Art Projects and Carriageworks in Sydney. Film program in collaboration with La Nouvelle Cinémathèque de la Danse Paris/CND.

For more information, please click on:

Mpavilion : http://www.mpavilion.org/collaborator/xavier-le-roy
ACMI : http://www.acmi.net.au/
Dancehouse : http://www.dancehouse.com.au/performance/performancedetails.php?id=214
Alliance française de Melbourne – www.afmelbourne.com.au

Michel Richard
For the Alliance Francaise de Melbourne

Translated from French by Lea Andrea Giry and Fleur Elisabeth Heaney students in the Master of Interpreting and Translation Studies at Monash University.

About Xavier Le Roy
Xavier Le Roy holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Montpellier, France. Since 1991 he has worked as a dancer and choreographer and has since become one of the most influential choreographers and dance thinkers of our time. Over the past two decades, he has collaborated with numerous acclaimed dancers and artists around the world including Tino Sehgal, who has credited Le Roy as being the inspiration that led him to introduce dance precepts into the visual arts. Le Roy's work has been shown in many international festivals and institutions, including Tanz im August, Berlin; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul and the Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf. His solo work Product of other circumstances (1999) was presented at Dancehouse in 2009, as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. More recently, Le Roy's work Untitled (2012) was presented in Sydney for Kaldor Public Art Project 27, 13 Rooms (2013), which was recognised as one of the strongest and most resonant pieces in the exhibition.