At Artistic Residencies in the Mountains Choreographers Create on a Higher Ground

Wilson Le Personnic

A new generation of choreographers is discovering that mountains offer something traditional studios cannot: a laboratory where bodies must adapt and perceptions sharpen under pressure. What draws these artists to such demanding terrain? In landscapes both intense and spectacular, the physical challenges become creative catalysts, pushing dancers and choreographers toward unexpected discoveries. Four artists — Aurélien Dougé, Vânia Vaneau, Manuel Roque and Julien Monty — describe how their experiences at high altitude have transformed their approach to movement.

In the shadow of Switzerland's Mont Miné glacier, choreographer Aurélien Dougé watched his performers navigate rocky terrain with the same precision they brought to the dance studio. “I wanted to initiate a joint reflection outside the studio,” Dougé said of his decision to bring his company to the Val d'Hérens region for their first mountain residency while creating Aux Lointains in 2024. “My aim was to take the time to enjoy a shared experience, without the pressure of an end result,” he continues. Every day, the group hiked to the surrounding peaks and their meandering ascents and descents became a way of mapping new movement for the piece – a sort of choreographic cartography. 

One of the highlights of the residency was a night walk at the foot of the glacier, in the glow of the valley and the shadows of the surrounding peaks. “The mountain is never silent,” observes Dougé. “In the dark, every sound is amplified, and when the slightest rock slides or when the glacier creaks, it becomes an event.” Deprived of visual cues, the group could move forward in a heightened state of listening, and every sound, every vibration, became a thread to be followed. This experience of loss and sensory acuity directly inspired the final production’s lighting design – sodium lamps casting sepia tones that recreated the gradual shift from color to the black-and-white vision of night.

At 2,877 meters above sea level, the Pic du Midi Observatory in the French Pyrenees typically hosts astronomers studying distant stars. But in October 2023, choreographer Vânia Vaneau transformed this scientific outpost into a rehearsal space. “It's an extraordinary place that gives you the physical sensation of being suspended in the sky,” said Vaneau, whose company became the first dance troupe to complete a residency at the observatory. The experience was less about creating specific movements than about absorbing the environment's effects on perception and physicality.

At that altitude, air becomes thin, light takes on different qualities, and the body responds in unexpected ways. “What we experienced affected our relationship to time, to balance, to our sensations,” Vaneau explained. The residency served as preparation for her 2024 work Heliosfera, and access to the observatory's coronagraph — an instrument for observing the sun's corona — opened new aesthetic possibilities. “I've been working on the notion of landscape for a long time,” she said. “Up there, the very idea of landscape exploded. It was no longer terrestrial but cosmic, infinite. Imagining the universe on this scale was a vertiginous experience.”

For choreographer Julien Monty, the mountains hold deeply personal significance. His father, an avid mountaineer, died while climbing, creating a complex relationship with the alpine environment that’s fueling his upcoming work Gasherbrum. The piece takes its name from Werner Herzog’s 1985 documentary about Himalayan climbing and draws on the artist’s childhood memories of family trips to a ski resort in Auris-en-Oisan. Monty aims to explore the link between mountaineering and dance. Both practices, he argues, demand total commitment of body and mind. “In the film, mountaineer Messner compares his practice to an inner quest, an art of living, which are echoes that I find in dance,” Monty says. 

For this project, Monty plans to take his collaborators from the Loge22 collective up Le Râteau, a 3,769 meter peak in the Écrins National Park. Some team members are already anxious about the climb — a fear Monty sees as valuable choreographic material. “I'd like them to feel the weight of the void, the tension of the rope and the vertigo,” he says. “I'm looking to capture that moment of fragile balance when you can only hold on by paying attention to the other, when the void acts as something that makes the bond visible.”

Montreal-based choreographer Manuel Roque chose the most extreme mountain laboratory of all: three months alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, a 4,265 kilometer route through the western United States that winds through desert, forest and glacial terrain. What began as “the adventure of a lifetime” in summer 2021 became a profound artistic investigation. Confronted with vast landscapes and extended solitude, Roque's body and mind adapted to focus on essentials: breathing, attention, observation. “I learned to inhabit immobility differently, to observe without weariness,” he said. This new capacity for sustained attention became the foundation for his 2022 solo Sierra Nevada.

The experience challenged romantic notions of wandering in nature. On the PCT, the slightest navigation error can prove fatal, creating tension between freedom and constraint that influenced his choreographic approach. “I discovered an ability to concentrate on very simple elements, to observe them in depth,” Roque reflected, describing the experience as meditative and sacred. The mountain, he learned, offers not just ascent but a descent into oneself. 

Wilson Le Personnic is a freelance writer and art worker. He collaborates with choreographic artists by supporting their creative processes or documenting their work. He also contributes writing to media outlets, cultural institutions and artistic projects, producing critical, editorial, and educational texts.

Julie Botet, Simon Feltz, Vânia Vaneau
June the 5^th and 10^th at the Atelier de Paris / CDCN

Le vent se lève
Choreography: Manuel Roque
June 14^th at the Atelier de Paris / CDCN

Talk about the book-object Corpo-Mundo
Jordi Galí & Vânia Vaneau
Within the Camping festival organised by CN D
June 18^th at the Maison de la danse à Lyon

Performance
Choreography: Aurélien Dougé
June 28^th and 29^th at the Biennale d’art contemporain Artocène