Last June, by participating in the “À vos pointes” project, you allowed the Repetto foundation to collect more than 500 pairs of worn pointe shoes. For each pair recovered, a new pair of pointe shoes was sent to schools supported by the Repetto foundation. Thanks to your mobilization, children from dance schools in Brazil and Cuba have received the necessary equipment to learn dance.
A few months later, these old pointe shoes were meticulously sorted and entrusted to the National School of Decorative Arts so that the artistic magic could work once again! Find out how these students gave these dance shoes a new life.
“Like precious relics, I carefully selected these points, worn but refined, from the cardboard pyramids in which they were stored by the hundreds. After having assembled them like trophies, the slippers take possession of me to resurrect their past memories. In an infernal whirlwind, they play with artistic references and transform themselves by revisiting the sets of famous films. Caught up in their game, I twirl and multiply, exhilarated until I lose my balance. »
“I noticed the suffering and the effort with which the dancers rehearse to achieve a pure and smooth aesthetic, then thought in the opposite direction: these slippers, previously tools, become central players in the narrative. Like Arman who multiplies and brutalizes an object, I attack the slipper and I achieve a raw final aesthetic. The dancer's body is like an animal, which we tame, train and wound. "The point then becomes a trace, a memory, a relic."
Student at ENSAD “For two months, I collected testimonies about dance from children, the elderly, friends, strangers and a few artists. Each slipper has become the witness of a beautiful story and each encounter is rendered in comic strips.” “My artistic project is to experience beautiful stories in order to be able to tell them. »“Each slipper has become the witness of a beautiful story”.
Represent the repetition of the same movement, of a personal and collective effort. The accumulation of points refers to perseverance, to the effort necessary to create a dance work. A painful phase which choreographs the final, perfect, precise vision offered to the spectator. This whirlwind of violent slippers encloses, protects and gives substance to this vision of the suspended moment. Thus, the roles are exchanged; it is the development of the spectacle that is first striking. “This whirlwind of violent slippers”.
