Helmuth Lachenmann’s “mute eloquence” in Xavier Leroy’s nondance static space

Abstract

The focus of the study is the work of the French nondance choreographer Xavier Leroy, one of the most original masters, who in his productions relied on alternative forms of working with the body and movement, presented in the context of the relationship of sound and choreographic gesture. His performances are aimed at gaining specific forms of audience attention, determined by the specific relationship between music and choreography. Leroy’s productions do not fit into the genre system of choreographic forms and form individual trajectories. The presentation of “choreography” in a conceptual way is based on ideas not associated with subjectivist bodily expression or a specific style. Choreography is emancipated from dance as such, and is involved in a living process of communication between music, its physical representation and the viewer/listener. Xavier Leroy, who has a doctorate in molecular biology, also approaches his choreographic work from a scientific perspective. On an aesthetic level, Leroy consciously rejects established ideas about dance with its strong associations with conventional categories of skill and craft, offering instead autonomous discourses that reject the cause-and-effect relationship between the conceptualization and expressiveness of dance. The article analyzes the creative trajectories connecting the conceptual choreography of Xavier Leroy with works from the field of concrete instrumental music by Helmut Lachenmann. The analysis focuses on the production of the performance “Salute to Caudwell”, carried out by the choreographer to the music of the German composer. In the process of working with a musical text, specific instrumental music is subject to gestural deconstruction: it is divided into fragments that are displayed at different levels of perception. These factors related to the sphere of aesthetic experience find themselves at the center of the transformation of the role of the viewer - an emancipated one, developing his relationship with the work in a pendulum form in an oscillatory relationship between the visible and the audible. The conclusion from the study is the idea of alienation of the instrumental gesture in relation to its choreographic imitation, which manifests itself at the moment of disruption of the cause-and-effect relationships of sound occurrence. The contours of the body cease to exist for the viewer, blurring between the performing gesture and Leroy’s conceptual choreography. At this point, the principles of Lachenmann’s “silent eloquence” are combined with the idea of conceptual choreography of nondance – Leroy’s movements.