Boris Charmatz:

“It’s in Dance’s Dna Not to Speak Out Loud”

Marie Pons

Boris Charmatz’s playful, experimental and politically engaged works have been performed around the world. The prominent French choreographer, 53, who has directed the Rennes CCN (National Choreographic Center) and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, discusses the thinking behind his most recent group and solo pieces, and reflects on the political crises currently affecting the dance world, calling for artists to come together and take action.

Marie Pons: In recent years, you have created several large group pieces, such as 10000 gestes (2017) and Happening Tempête (2021). You’ve also made two solos, SOMNOLE (2021) and Muette (2026). How do you decide whether you want to create for others or your own body?

Boris Charmatz: I love contrast. Staging Cercles (2024), which brings together 200 professional, nonprofessional and student dancers, is vastly different from performing Muette, a solo in silence for small auditoriums. Recently, I’ve been working more on solo pieces, and it’s been very different from what I’m used to. Even though I’m always working with a team, with Muette I felt like I was alone with my pen and a blank page.

MP: What has working on solo pieces opened up for you?

BC: As a child, I loved playing with Lego. When I’m alone in the studio, it feels like I’m doing that again. Most choreographers start their careers by making solos: they allow you to work on yourself before passing on what you’ve invented to others. When I was young, I loved to watch solos by choreographers like Vera Mantero, Emmanuelle Huynh and Claudia Triozzi, but I wasn’t interested in creating one myself. Then, when I was about to turn fifty, I felt like the world was opening up for me. Looking inward, and experiencing solo work’s contrast with the social joy of working with others, was a major discovery for me. I really want to keep exploring this—I’m already thinking about a third solo.

MP: For audiences, being caught up in the tide of 200 dancers and sitting in silence watching a single body are radically different experiences…

BC: When dancing a solo, you develop an even closer connection with the audience. There’s only one body to look at: I’m alone with you, we’re partners. It’s a different type of group piece. With SOMNOLE, I was surprised to see that the audience was almost breathing with me. Whistling, [which I do in the piece], makes breathing musical, and it felt like we were running out of breath together. 

This sense of proximity is even greater in Muette. For most of the performance, the audience is not in the dark. In contrast to 10000 gestes, where 50 gestures are done in one second and the audience doesn’t know what to look at first, in the solos, the audience is able to focus on the many different things that are happening in my body. 

MP: In Muette, you seem to be exploring a language that cannot be spoken. Are you wary of words?

BC: This solo is all about not saying out loud what goes through my head. It’s even difficult to speak about the piece now. You could say it’s in dance’s DNA not to speak out loud. Dancers have often been reproached for not having a language. We’re told that what we’re doing “isn’t saying anything,” that people “don’t understand” it. I’ve fought back against that through projects like Danse de nuit (2016), in which we were constantly speaking and dancing. 

Muette is both a form of resistance to and an acceptance of this idea. It’s not that I believe dancers have nothing to say; rather, there’s an awareness that something essential happens when the mouth is not saying anything, or when it is saying something we cannot hear.

MP: Is silence something you’ve been exploring for a while?

BC: For Liberté Cathédrale (2023), we worked with testimonies of survivors of child abuse within the Church. The piece was created in a church near Wuppertal, and we felt a moral obligation to hear these voices. When we read these texts, we realized that we might not be the best people to make these voices heard. Maybe it would be better for us to simply stay silent alongside them, like when people observe a minute of silence for voices that have been silenced for many years. In the performance, we stood with our mouths open after the texts had been read. I felt that we had developed something very powerful, something I needed to explore further.

MP: This silence resonates with current events. It echoes moments when people have fought for the most fragile, stigmatized bodies and people to be able to speak out about the violence and oppression they have endured.

BC: When things like this happen in the world, we have to react. We have to speak out and take a stand. But many of us can’t keep up. Faced with the enormity and impossibility of this task, I thought the silence in Muette felt very relevant. I begin the solo in a corner, like a child who has been sent there for a time-out—a place of silence. When I thought about it, I realized that the creation process for Muette may have begun when I was 15 and a student at the Paris Opera Ballet School. One night, I danced naked in the studio, in silence, which could have gotten me expelled. I wasn’t particularly brave, but that was when the first seed of what would become Muette was sown.

MP: Several of your pieces explore childhood. Was that a formative time for you? 

BC: People often tell me that they see the child in me, that in Muette I could be seven, 77, or even 99 years old! I’m 53, but childhood still feels very present to me, that’s for sure. It remains within me—the trauma, but also my first dance classes when I was seven, and learning how to whistle at school during recess. I hope I’m mostly grown-up, but I also hope I’m not afraid to keep exploring sensations I first experienced a long time ago.

MP: You have worked in very different places, from the Dance Museum in Rennes to Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in Germany. You still work with terrain, a project for choreographic experimentation without a fixed location. How have these places influenced your work? 

BC: I’ve been extremely fortunate to work with incredible people, in incredible locations, and to dance in places I never dreamed I could dance. I’ve performed works several times in the Cour d’honneur—the iconic main courtyard of the Palais des Papes—at the Avignon Festival and in the Grand Palais in Paris. I like to think there is not just one space for dance. It can be done in one’s bed, in the shower, in a studio, in one’s head, in a club, in a village square, outdoors… Dance doesn’t depend on place—yet places can live within us and transform us. For Muette, I did a residency in the Chartreuse in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon. [Formerly a historic 14^th-century Carthusian monastery, it’s now a national center for dramatic writing] where people take a vow of silence to write. That really carried the piece. It grounded it.  

MP: The very existence of such places is now under threat. What do you make of the current budget cuts hitting the cultural sector? Do you think we have the capacity to fight them? 

BC: I think the petition by the Syndeac [France’s National Union of Artistic and Cultural Enterprises], “Culture Everywhere: Establish a Mandatory 1%” (Culture partout, 1 % obligatoire), has provided some much-needed momentum. It prompted the government to reconsider the spending freeze it announced, and in July, it made funding available. 

On top of the financial crisis facing culture at the regional, local, and national levels, we’re also on the brink of global climate catastrophe. It’s hard to face multiple threats like these, which affect the foundations of our democracy: the rule of law, justice, media independence, and our social welfare and solidarity systems. We have to fight to prevent the far-right party (RN) from taking power in France in 2027, while remaining aware that the worst may still be to come.

MP: You were one of the artists who signed the open letter to the French Ministry of Culture on Aug. 20, 1999, in which a group of artists came together to defend dance. Why do you think it has become harder for artists to unite around a common cause in the same way today?

BC: Dance companies are overwhelmed by the crisis that is engulfing them. They have to react while being mindful of the fact that they are on the brink of disappearing. You can’t react to political events if you’re fighting for your own survival. Still, I hope that things will happen. I have faith in social movements and in the upcoming election.

MP: What kind of artistic responses seem possible to you in this context?

BC: In the face of this context, I created Muette, and I’ve insisted on the need to make room for research and to preserve a space for art for art’s sake. Fifteen or 20 years ago, there were many labs and research units in France. Now the means of production are scarce, and the labs are gone. The imperative is to produce pieces that will sell; otherwise, we die.

I think we need to unite around the work of Syndeac and our unions, and form collective alliances. The coming season will be difficult, and I’m not sure it will be better in the future. My next show will be called Bonne chance (“Good Luck”). I mean, really, we’re screwed!

Marie Pons is a writer, critic and dance researcher. Storytelling, reported speech, investigative work, imaginary landscapes and encounters play an important role in her practice. She is editor-in-chief of Les Démêlées, a newspaper devoted to dance criticism in the Hauts-de-France region. She writes for the Journal de l’ADC in Geneva and Mouvement, and is an associate editor of Springback Magazine (UK). She also makes audio documentaries with Forêt Noire.

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SOMNOLE
Choreography: Boris Charmatz
From November 5 to 7 at the MC93
within plan D - CN D X MC93 and the Festival d’Automne à Paris

Amateur workshop - Boris Charmatz’s repertoire
by François Malbranque
November 7 at the MC93
within plan D - CN D X MC93 and the Festival d’Automne à Paris

Muette
Choreography: Boris Charmatz
From October 22 to 24 at the Agora, Cité internationale de la danse
From November 11 to 15 at the MC93
within plan D - CN D X MC93 and the Festival d’Automne à Paris
5 February 5th 2027 in Marrakech, within the On Marche festival
From February 16 to 18 2027 at the Maison de la Culture d’Amiens

Boris Charmatz x 100
Choreography: Boris Charmatz
From December 4 to 7 at La Villette
within the Festival d’Automne à Paris

Amateur Dances the Grand Palais: A Deep Dive Into Cercles
by Marie Plantin for CN D Magazine
to read

Behind the craft: Boris Charmatz
podcast for CN D Magazine
to listen to