Math­ilde Mon­freux and the Com­pag­nie des Corps Par­lants are work­ing on an inter­act­ive con­fer­ence inspired by con­tact impro­visa­tion, to ques­tion – in a humor­ous way – the bound­ar­ies between art, sport and dance.

Developed in the early ’70s in the USA, con­tact impro­visa­tion straddles the bound­ar­ies between per­form­ance, exper­i­ment­al research, sport and somat­ic prac­tices. On the bangs of insti­tu­tions, it con­veys clichés with which Math­ilde Mon­freux dia­logues, play­ing with the sep­ar­a­tion between art, sport and dance, in the course of a lec­ture-per­form­ance that invites the audi­ence to shift their gaze. The con­fer­ence and its nar­rat­ive are rooted in a ques­tion put to pro­fes­sion­als and novices alike: “Are you one of those people who believe that con­tact improv has been saved by cov­id?” The testi­mon­ies and per­son­al accounts thus gathered will inter­sect the his­tory of this his­tor­ic prac­tice and its com­munity, as an echo to con­tem­por­ary ques­tions linked to care, fem­in­ist and eco­lo­gic­al poet­ics. Dance will emerge between story and prac­tice, in a move­ment nour­ished by humor and philo­sophy. In the same vein, Mouvemente­ments intends to forge a new link with spec­tat­ors, by allow­ing them to ques­tion their expect­a­tions and rep­res­ent­a­tions, but also by plunging them into the heart of an immers­ive device. An exper­i­ment in the play of writ­ing in space to exper­i­ence dif­fer­ent qual­it­ies of atten­tion, like a score guided through dif­fer­ent spaces, move­ments and postures.