With Faits et gestes, Noé Soulier’s writ­ing unfolds in a kal­eido­scope of lively move­ments, echo­ing the Baroque music played on stage by harp­si­chord­ist Maude Grat­ton. Four per­formers embody this frag­men­ted vocab­u­lary for a per­form­ance that is both highly writ­ten and open to impro­visa­tion. 

Cre­ated in 2016 and revived for the Fest­iv­al d’Automne in 2022, with the addi­tion of harp­si­chord­ist Maude Grat­ton, Faits et gestes is one of Noé Souli­er­’s pieces in which the cho­reo­graph­er attempts to activ­ate the spec­tat­ors’ phys­ic­al memory. Move­ments are aimed at absent objects or events, sug­gest­ing rather than show­ing. This open read­ing echoes the lat­it­ude giv­en on stage to the per­formers (includ­ing the cho­reo­graph­er him­self): in the group sequences, the move­ment phrases are writ­ten down, but their order, ori­ent­a­tion, length and rela­tion­ships with the oth­er dan­cers are impro­vised. The com­pos­i­tion emerges from the choices made by each dan­cer based on dif­fer­ent rules, cre­at­ing cho­reo­graphy from with­in. Faits et gestes explores dif­fer­ent ways of inter­pret­ing move­ment, whose ref­er­ences and mean­ings are diluted. In a strik­ing surge of energy, the dan­cers focus on how one ges­ture can sug­gest anoth­er. In a ten­sion between expres­sion and form­al abstrac­tion, their move­ments power­fully echo the works of Frober­ger and Bach, who elev­ated the rhet­or­ic­al dimen­sion and art of coun­ter­point in Baroque music.