© Anne Lenglet
L'Art de conserver la santé
On discovering the Salernitan Medical School’s 18th century treatise on the art of living a healthy life, Ondine Cloez asked herself the following question: how can we conjure up all those gestures which have been lost or forgotten? In this dance piece with live singing, Ondine Cloez and two other fellow dancers perform aphorisms taken from the work, as well as sharing reflections and revealing what remains in their bodies from that time.
In order to grow medicinal plants in her garden, Ondine Cloez dusted off a copy of the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitarium, a popular collection of precepts for a healthy lifestyle, a manual for our relationship with our own bodies and the world. These poems written in alexandrines deal with subjects ranging from the common cold, sleep, and passionate love to the summer, cherries and wine, addressing reader, doctor and plant alike in the same informal manner. Alongside her companions Anne Lenglet and Clémence Gaillard, the Brussels-based French choreographer and performer will be developing a vocal and choreographic score based on the work. Rather than a historical or aesthetic re-enactment, the means for this encounter with the mediaeval body and its forgotten gestures will be the language, imagination and bodies of contemporary dancers. Via this continuation of the process she initiated in Vacances Vacance, a piece focussing on the relationship between movement and her own train of thought or with the literature which describes it, the artist hollows out a dance of absence and survival. Her interpretation, as profound as it is undisciplined, of these bodies, together with their different states and emotions deftly plays upon the hiatus between what is said, what we see and what we perceive.
Text by Mélanie Jouen for Festival d’Automne à Paris
Credits
Project Ondine Cloez
Interpretation Ondine Cloez, Clémence Galliard, Anne Lenglet
Light Vic Grevendonk
Artistic and musical collaboration Clémence Galliard, Vic Grevendonk, Anne Lenglet, Jaime Llopis
Outside eye Marine Bestel
Production Entropie Production
Dissemination and on tour production ama brussels – France Morin, assisted by Clara Schmitt
Co-production Festival d’Automne à Paris, CDCN Atelier de Paris, CCN Le Phare – Le Havre, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Théâtre de la Bastille, Les Brigittines – Centre d’Art du mouvement de la Ville de Bruxelles, far° Nyon, CDCN de Grenoble – Le Pacifique, Conseil de la Danse du Service des Arts de la Scène de la Fédération Wallonie – Bruxelles
Supported by Buda – Courtrai, Vooruit – Gand, Honolulu – Nantes, Le Pic – Saint-Jean des Ollières. Le Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis a soutenu la création de cette œuvre.
Ondine Cloez
Ondine Cloez (1979) is a French choreographer and performer based in Brussels. She began by training in classical dance at the National Conservatory of Grenoble. In 1998, she moved to Brussels and studied at P.A.R.T.S. for three years. She participated in the Ex.e.r.ce training at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, in 2002.
Since then she has worked as a performer for Mathilde Monnier, Laurent Pichaud, Linda Samaraweerova, Marcos Simoes, Sara Manente, Jaime Llopis, Randy Carreno, Rémy Héritier, Antoine Defoort & Halory Goerger, Grand Magasin, Jocelyn Cottencin, Loïc Touzé, Gaël Santisteva… In 2009, she co-signed with Sara Manente and Michiel Reynaerts the video Some Performances and the in situ project Grand Tourists. In 2018 she created her first piece, the solo Vacances vacance and L’art de conserver la santé in October 2020. In the wake of this creation she proposes a declination for outdoor La Ballade des Simples.
In 2020 and 21, Ondine Cloez is artist in residence at the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. Starting from the 13th century work, L’art de conserver la santé, she multiplies the proposals in arborescence: a choreographic piece, walks and visits, conferences extending her reflection on health and the Middle Ages.
In 2022, in collaboration with the dancer, actor and choreographer Kotomi Nishiwaki, she began research for a duet The first word of the poem of the first collection is basket.