No.on
- Dance & performance
- Recommended age: 14+
- Language: Engleză
60 min.
Info
No.oN is a piece that started by acknowledging a « no » ! By refusing the consent of the body that is demanded to a performer: their infamous « availability ». By refusing also the all-powerfulness of regular beats, that contradict our most surreptitious impulses. By refusing the alignment of our desires to a common law for the bodies. By refusing unisons, marches, four-beat bars…
However, instead of searching why we refuse what oppresses us, or an alternative to that oppression, I wanted to explore the refusal itself. It seemed to me as an ill-defined signal : « I cannot do that, my body does not want ». Moreover it implicitly revealed a facet of the body, the one that says no : a facet that arises when it does not follow the onward marches imposed to it, when it does not digest, when it stubbles, when it stutters. When its materiality confronts and limits our desires, within the irregular beat of its collapses and its uprisings. To my mind, that contains the possible seeds of insurrectional bodies. With that no, the body does not display an anomaly, but on the contrary a very own language, an expression of negation that is always coupled and intertwined with its most celebrated opposite : the flow, the uninterrupted onward movement, the streaming.
That very own language is a language of rhythms. What flows, and what interrupts the flow form a couple that unfolds and punctuate time. Rhythms indeed are at the heart of my scenic and writing work, as they enable me to trace back the way external and internal forces organise the body, the sound and the language in time, without taking the risk of the image, of representation, of discourse, or any projection of an already defined sense.
This rhythmical logic of punctuation has delineates the writing of the poem and the sound composition of No.oN. Its phrasing is marked by the couple of « no » and « on », the force that refuses/blocks and the one that flows/prompts to action, and develops into a streaming of sentences. Iannis Xenakis’ Rebonds having a similar rhythmic functioning, from punctuation to the accumulation of a sound mass, it has provided the constraints from which the vocal score was composed, moving the logic of the percussion into the voice, and further to the space : an instrumentarium of 8 microphones disseminated in the space maps out the sound of the performance, while it orchestrates movements.
Indeed performing a poem implies for me much more than its encounter with my voice. It is immediately entangled into a body, a space, a dispositive. In No.oN, I keep on researching what is a body that says, and how the rhythm of a body not only produces a voice, but also reconfigurate language and meaning. It is indeed not a given that the gesture matches the word and it demands a choreographic recrafting of the assemblage of voice and movements. If there is an ethics of saying just what I mean, the « body that says no » enables to reconnected to the expression of our most fragile hesitation just as much as to our collective and individual possibilities of resistance. (Claire Huber)
Direction, text and performance: Claire Huber
Sound: Stalin Blake and Claire Huber
Dramaturgical collaboration: Alain Franco
Artistic advise: Jean-Luc Plouvier
Sound technique assistance: Alex Fostier
Light: Lucas Van Haesbroeck
Production: Inflexions
With the support of Needcompany and ICTUS ensemble.
Biography
Claire Huber (b. 1987, Paris) develops scenic forms at the intersection of voice, poetic text, sound and movement. She is interested in questions of musicality in the spoken voice, prosody and rhythm in their spatial, physical and sonic dimensions, as well as in contemporary forms of orality explored through different languages.
She studied philosophy at EHESS, Paris, and choreography and dramaturgy at P.A.R.T.S., Brussels (Research section). She has regularly attended the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt and develops a long-term research and practice in microtonal singing and Serbian epic prosody with singer Svetlana Spajić.
Her research has led her to develop workshops on “Dramaturgies of Sound”, bringing together performing artists who incorporate sound into their compositional logics, and on “Listening as Composition”, proposing a physical approach to listening within the creative process.
She has translated texts by Rilke, Kassner, Auden and Stevens, among others, from German and English into French. More recently, she initiated an experimental platform for translating poetic texts from languages unknown to the translators. She writes poetic texts, destined or not for performance.
Her performance works include Brèves brèves lignes de l’horizon (2021), which has toured across a dozen of European countries, No.oN (premiere 2026) and Blake&Blake (in progress). They are produced by Inflexions, an association she co-founded with musician Stalin Blake.
Residencies: Le Lieu Unique – National Theater in Nantes, STUK, BUDA, Rif, MILL Studios, PACO, De School van Gaasbeek, Huis Herman Teirlinck, Bunker/Stara Elektrana, Flux Laboratory/Athens.
With support from: the Flemish Community Commission, Teatroskop—a program initiated by the French Institute in Paris and the French Institute in Bucharest.
Iridescent 2026 partners
Institutional Partners
Ministry of Culture · Administration of the National Cultural Fund (AFCN) · Aerowaves · Moving Balkans · European Union · Onassis Stegi · Greek Embassy in Bucharest · Greek Union of Romania · Italian Cultural Institute in Bucharest · MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania · “I.L. Caragiale” National Theater · “Grigore Antipa” National Museum of Natural History
Cultural Partners
LINOTIP – Independent Choreographic Center · /SAC @ Berthelot & Malmaison · Tangaj Collective Association · Cărturești · Cinema Union · Terapie Pentru Mișcare · Petec Association · O2G Association · Teatre
Main Media Partner
Radio Guerrilla
Media Partners
Zile și Nopți · Matca Magazine · Scena Magazine · Arta Magazine · ELLE · TVR Cultural · Munteanu Recomandă · AGERPRES · VisitBucharest · Radio România Cultural · Haute Culture · Liternet · The Institute · Ceașca de Cultură · Daily Magazine · Modernism · Zeppelin · Iscoada · B-Critic · România Pozitivă
