PRESENTATION:

We call body practices the physical activities based on a conception of the moving body and that define a set of exercises and activities whose aim is to concretely realize this conception. The focus is thus to work more on the functioning of the body than on its image or a preconceived representation (e.g. a particular style).

If one could observe in the past years a particular attachment to body representations and conventions of representation in many dance performances, it is useful and productive to directly question body practices, inasmuch as they often imply a specific conception of the body and work on it to make it fit that conception.

How does a particular body practice imply a particular form of representation and how does it determine a form and a method of choreographic writing? How far does a body practice convey a social and political thinking? How can methods, frame and modes of organization in the creation work find a coherence with the body practice, and which form of representation ensue from them? These questions are at the origin of Praticable.

Concretely, Praticable consists in periods of common research of /on physical practices which are the soil for various creations. Each specific project implies the involvement of all participants in the practice, the research and the elaboration of the practice from which the piece will ensue. This way, we connect research and production, but the sharing of practices is not depending on production. The research periods can be part of a creation period or be completely independent from a production.

In order to give visibility to this working context, when a piece made in the frame of Praticable is presented, we program ourselves a first part that precedes that piece. This first part, whose duration goes up to 20 minutes, can be a short piece, a work in progress or an excerpt of a work, by another participant of the project.

The practices which we consider rest upon a non-hierarchical model for the transmission of knowledge.