Samuel Mathieu

Samuel Mathieu’s dancing is halfway between a conceptual approach of the idea he wishes to convey and an assertive taste for a final object danced in a literal way. Early on, for his pieces, he required his performers to show strong physical commitment. Physicality is a word that he often refers to as a choreographer. A word that encompasses the notions of performance, demand, accuracy and speed at the same time.

Moreover, even though his career as a choreographer is interspersed with recurrent moments of self-examination which have led to the creation of a few soli in his repertoire, and even though he is attentive to all the performers individually as human beings, Samuel Mathieu likes the group, the assembly, and even the cluster, the intertwinements and the entanglements of bodies. With the group he searches for the rhythm of his pieces through alternating moments of unison and moments of confrontation.

For many years now, his creations have focussed on the link between music and dance, on the place of sound and rhythm compared to the dance, to the movement. A strong and long-standing collaboration with Maxime Denuc has enabled him to test several musical writing principles to accompany his pieces: real-time electronic musical composition during rehearsals (Generic-X), composition of a score based, just like for dancing, on improvisations, suggestions, exchanges and compositions with the musicians of a string quartet (The Man who Plunges), creation of a musical piece before the choreographic creation in order to observe the musical work’s positioning, in terms of influence, compared with the choreographic work’s (Remarkable identities).

To know more: https://www.youtube.com/user/samuelmathieu/videos