With Temps de Baleine, dan­cer-cho­reo­graph­er Jonas Chér­eau adapts his first solo for young­er audi­ences. A bur­lesque and poet­ic “met­eodance” to take the tem­per­at­ure of our moods.

In 2019, Jonas Chér­eau cre­ated Baleine, a solo on cli­mate change, ima­gin­ing a danced met­eor­o­lo­gic­al study in which each move­ment triggered the next in a bur­lesque chain reac­tion. Along­side two screens where words per­form their own cho­reo­graphy, the dan­cer now redis­cov­ers the ges­tures of his show, in a format adap­ted to young­er audi­ences. Temps de Baleine is con­ceived as poetry that can be read in either dir­ec­tion. The words address the rela­tion­ship between the sky and dance, while Jonas Chér­eau­’s “met­eodance” play­fully con­nects inner states and emo­tions with those of the out­side world. Bal­an­cing between abstrac­tion and fic­tion, magic and con­tem­pla­tion, the dan­cer asks a ques­tion that’s less simple than it seems: what’s wrong with the cli­mate? At once play­ful and ambigu­ous, this body-eco­sys­tem opens like the pages of a book, reveal­ing elu­sive met­eor­o­lo­gic­al phe­nom­ena. On the back of a whale, bey­ond the waves and storms, Jonas Chér­eau takes chil­dren to places where words can­not go.