100 minutes

“The project is at the same time minimal and totally beyond measure: minimal because the whole of the piece can be grasped at a single glance, beyond measure because the company is enormous and stirred by an infinity of breathing gestures.” Boris Charmatz

“The sequence of movements is ingeniously designed for variety: sitting and standing, in-place and covering ground. But each movement seems to flow from the preceding one and into the following.” Brian Seibert, The New York Times

Twenty-four dancers  perform a dance in the round—within a circle formed by the audience. World-renowned choreographer and dancer Boris Charmatz has created a riveting mosaic of movement that slides from body to body, a series of everyday gestures that morph into movement that defies genre. Seemingly infinite interlocking gestures offer a myriad of perspectives. Follow one dancer throughout the journey, or allow your gaze to wander over the group, a crowd of connecting movements that produce fleeting mirages of narrative and image that dissolve and transform anew. The dancers vary from a collective, oscillating structure to individuals in the search for a beauty existing within the suspension of conflicts.

Boris Charmatz: Dancing Dialogues For additional programming information including lectures and workshops please visit drexel.edu/charmatz.

$29 general / $20.30 member
$15 student + 25-and-under

This presentation of Levée des conflits has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Festival Co-Producers 
Maureen Alexander and Kathryn Doyle
Michael Lillys
Jane G. Pepper

Featured photo: View of the performance, Levée des conflits extended / Suspension of Conflicts Extended in the series, “Musée de la danse: Three Collective Gestures.” October 25, 2013 through October 27, 2013. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photographer: Julieta Cervantes. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

About Boris Charmatz

Boris Charmatz. Photo Credit: Musée de la danse, © Ursula Kaufmann

While dancer and choreographer Boris Charmatz maintains an extensive touring schedule, he also participates in improvisational events on a regular basis with Saul Williams, Archie Shepp, Médéric Collignon and continues to work as a performer with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Tino Sehgal. Since 2009, he has been the director of the Rennes and Brittany National Choreographic Centre (France), and has transformed it into a Museum of Dance (Musée de la danse) of a new kind. The museum has initiated, among others, the projects: préfiguration, expo zéro, rebutoh, brouillon (rough draft), 20 Dancers for the XX Century, Fous de danse (Mad about dance), and Petit Musée de la danse. Boris Charmatz cosigned the books undertraining / On A Contemporary Dance with Isabelle Launay, Emails 2009–2010 with Jérôme Bel, and signed “Je suis une école”, related to the project Bocal, a nomadic and ephemeral school. Associate artist of the 2011 Festival d’Avignon, Charmatz presented enfant, a piece for 26 children and 9 dancers in the Cour d’Honneur of the Pope’s Palace. He is currently working on danse de nuit, a performance for 6 dancers that will première on September 2, 2016 at La Bâtie-Festival de Genève (Switzerland).

Further Reading

Levée des conflits. Photo Credit: Musée de la danse, © Caroline Ablain

Excerpt: The memory game remained an intellectual tickle, as my attention was absorbed by other aspects. Each dancer has his or her own speed, attack and relation to the audience. There are clever linkages. Read the full article.

Boris Charmatz’s Museum on the Move, an interview with Molly Elizalde, Interview Magazine

Excerpt: You always think dance is ephemeral, is immaterial. But, actually, there’s a lot of text, there’s scores, there’s a lot of videos, there’s a lot of pictures. And you can say that a dancer dancing is not an object, but you can turn it into an object. Read the full article.

Engage the Art Events—Conversations

Explore Levée des conflits with a list of film, lecture, and panel discussion events surrounding this production.

Conversation with Boris Charmatz and Lois Welk
Presented in conjunction with the Knowing Dance More Series, The University of the Arts Choreographer Boris Charmatz is heralded for his innovative and provocative post-modern choreographic work. Lois Welk, the former executive director of Dance/UP, engages Charmatz in a public conversation about artistic practice, public participation, and the evolution of a new vision for dance as a time-based visual art.
Sept 7 at 11:30AM
Free / 90 minutes
Y Gym Dance Theater, Gershman Y
401 South Broad Street

Conversation with Boris Charmatz and Simon Dove
This dialogue explores Charmatz’s evolving notions of performance practice as well as the shifting relationships between his work and his audiences. Simon Dove is co-curator of the Crossing the Line festival, director of Dancing in the Streets in New York, and the former artistic director of Springdance (Netherlands).
Sept 8 at 11:30am
Free / 90 minutes
Drexel URBN Annex Screening Room
3401 Filbert Street

Visual Arts Roundtable Discussion
Four experts share their views on the place of performance in the museum setting. Panel includes: choreographer Boris Charmatz (Musée de la danse, France), visual art curator Ana Janevski (Museum of Modern Art), and theorist Marie Bardet (Paris 8, France). Moderated by Erica Battle of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This event takes place in conjunction with the Anne d’Harnoncourt Symposium.
Sept 10 at 12:45pm
Free with museum admission
60 minutes
Alter Gallery
Philadelphia Museum of Art
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Pre-Performance Talk with Ana Janevski
Boris Charmatz, choreographer and director of Musée de la danse, continually questions the distinction between performance and visual art; reframing dance performance as a temporal extension of curated visual art. Ana Janevski is the associate curator of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art. She was the first museum curator to present Charmatz’s work in the United States.
Sept 10 at 6:30pm
Free / 60 minutes
Mandell Theater, Drexel University
3220 Chestnut Street

Engage the Arts Events—Workshops

Community Workshops
These two-hour interactive dance workshops are for dancers of all abilities, ages 18 and up. Participants learn movements from Charmatz’s signature work Levée des conflits, a dance of twenty-five gestures that evolve into one continuous sequence. Held at two outdoor plazas, participants learn several of the gestures and develop the connection between them to make a dance phrase.

Pre-registration is recommended but not required.

Sept 9 at 11am
Free / 120 minutes
Outdoors on the Perelman Plaza
Drexel University
32nd Street between Chestnut and Market Streets
(Rain location: Drexel University Main Building Great Court, 3141 Chestnut Street)

Sept 10 at 10am
Free / 120 minutes
This workshop is combined with the participants of the professional workshop series. Outdoors on the East Terrace, Philadelphia Museum of Art
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
(Rain location: Great Stair Hall, Philadelphia Museum of Art)