What actually happens when we see? That question sits at the heart of this new project by Éric Minh Cuong Castaing, Aloun Marchal and Marine Relinger. On stage, four visually impaired artists bring dance and documentary storytelling together, blending their own life stories with very personal ways of inhabiting their bodies. Hearing, touch — everything we usually push into the background — becomes the starting point for movement here. Sighted and non-sighted performers guide one another, in a piece bathed in brightness but with wide stretches of shadow too — what the choreographer sums up as the idea of "a shared gesture, more attuned to others."
The piece continues a body of work built up over several years, in contact with arts organizations and other worlds, with professionals and amateurs alike. Two directions shaped the research. On one side, contact dance, already central to their earlier creations: the wish to have very different bodies, able or impaired, meet and discover each other through touch. On the other, butoh, the Japanese dance built entirely on mental imagery: what becomes of it, exactly, in the hands of those we assume cannot see? Vision promises to be a show firmly turned toward the light.