Julie Nioche
Suspended among weighing masses (Nos Solitudes/Our Solitudes), harassed by a propeller that they have to follow or dodge (Voleuse/Thief), stripped bare by the water that floods the stage (Matter), the performers of Julie Nioche's plays are the subjects of a form of dancing that always doubles as an ordeal. The devices she creates, often with scenographer Virginie Mira, allow the expression, in a precarious state, of a newfound freedom. For the beings of Julie Nioche's plays are trapped in parallel and overwhelming solitudes, as in Sisyphus, in which 50, 100, 150, 200 people jump up and down, standing next to one another and facing the same direction. Parallel to her creations, she develops with A.I.M.E., Association d'Individus en Mouvements Engagés (Association of Moving and Committed Individuals), various projects of practice for people of different origins, which she sees as part of a “process of empowerment.” How to give people back their agency, to increase their autonomy? Those are crucial social and political questions to which Julie Nioche answers through her practice of both osteopathy and dance.
RB, April 2014
