Mutant Stage 8
Xavier Veilhan
Lives and works in Paris (France).
Date:
2017
Medium:
Film, 2.53 minutes
Mutant Stage 8, a film by Xavier Veilhan with Marie-Agnès Gillot, 2017
Between the outstretched arms of a basket crane, Marie-Agnès Gillot and Dimitri Chamblas dance gently in front of Xavier Veilhan's low-tech camera in the 9 rue du Plâtre construction site, still void of its future glass tower. Exclusively filmed on the site’s patio, this eighth episode of the Mutant Stage series sets free from the piece’s original choreography, this time revealing itself through a low definition image and crystal-clear music composed by Jonathan Fitoussi.
“This project began less than a year ago with a meeting - a choreography staged and performed by Marie-Agnès and Dimitri in my studio. For the first time I worked from an existing piece, a situation that I had not completely created myself. So I had to integrate a form of lyricism and sensuality, which differ from my normal tone. The quality of the image and music differs from the live version performed by Bertrand Bonnello, echoing the distance between my vision as a film director and a film in which the movements do not belong to me.”
Xavier Veilhan
Marie-Agnès Gillot
On 18 March 2004, Marie-Agnès Gillot became the first Principal Dancer to be nominated for performing in a contemporary choreography at the Opéra national de Paris, following her performance of Signes by Carolyn Carlson.
Marie-Agnès Gillot, a faithful interpreter of the great classical ballets, is highly sought after by contemporary choreographers. She blends power and fragility, alternating between the femme fatale and characters that are romantic, cruel and impertinent. She has contributed her virtuoso technique to works by Pina Bausch, Maurice Béjart, Roland Petit, Edouard Lock, Wayne McGregor, Benjamin Millepied, Jiří Kylián, William Forsythe, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet. In 2007, when Sophie Calle, represented France at the Venice Biennale, Marie-Agnès Gillot performed Prenez Soin De Vous. She also danced with live swans in Luc Petton’s ballet Swan at the Chaillot Theatre in 2012.
Marie-Agnès Gillot exhibits similarly eclectic tastes in her choreography. In 2007, her choreography Rares Différences gained attention and was performed at the Suresnes Cités Danse festival.
In 2009, she created ART ÈRE, to the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Trio Élégiaque, for the Junior Ballet at the Paris Conservatory. Two of her works were exhibited at Palais de Tokyo. In 2011 she appeared on stage alongside Alice Renavand at the Un Violon sur le Sable festival in Royan, France, in two pieces: Blanche Marine, which she choreographed to Aquarium from Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of the Animals, and Black Back, to the music of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. In October 2012, she presented Sous Apparence, her first original work for the Opéra de Paris.
In November 2009, she organised a flash mob under the Louvre pyramid for a children’s charity La Chaîne de l’Espoir. She also works with an AIDS charity, ICCARRE, for which she choreographed a duet performed with Blanca Li at a fundraiser held at Maison Jean-Paul Gaultier in December 2014.
Marie-Agnès Gillot is a Dame of the Legion of Honour, the Order of Merit, and the Order of Arts and Letter.
Mutant Stage 8