Before plunging into the “Retrospective” by Xavier Le Roy, a few things must be kept in mind. First, the “Retrospective” by Xavier Le Roy is the second monographic exhibition presented by the Musée de la danse, after Jérôme Bel en 3 sec. 30 sec. 3 min 30 min. 3 h. which was devoted, as the title indicates, to the choreography of Jérôme Bel. Second, the “Rétrospective” is, as far as I know, the first exhibition to have been invited by the Musée de la danse, that is, the first one which was not produced, conceived, and realized directly by the Museum itself. The “Rétrospective” originated from an idea put forward by the Fondation Tàpiès. The exhibition was developed by Xavier Le Roy in the specific context of that institution. Third, this is the second time Xavier Le Roy has been invited to the Musée de la danse, the first being his piece created for the Rebutoh night—a subjective take on the idea of the Butoh, weaving together memories, videos, lectures, and dance extracts.
These three remarks already raise some interesting questions: regarding the “Rétrospective” and regarding the Musée de la danse. Let us start with the monographic exhibition: what does this format represent in the context of museum space? Is it a coincidence that the first two choreographers singled out by the Musée de danse for monographic exhibitions are Jérôme Bel and Xavier Le Roy? As I recall, Boris Charmatz had explained the objective of the Jérôme Bel exhibition as follows: to suspend the unending movement of self-reflection of the Musée de danse (a new version of the concept with each new exhibition), and to adopt a “more traditional” format which institutes it as a fully fledged museum. Unlike with projects such as expo zéro or brouillon, which combined contexts, superposed performative, narrative, and scenographic approaches, and undermined the status of works of art by actions or discourses, there is no apparent paradox for a “Musée de danse” to do an “exhibition” on a “choreographer.” Only here’s the rub: monographic exhibition is the format of sacralization par excellence. How to do an exhibition devoted to a choreographer without putting him on the altar? One could say that a desacralizing works—such as those of Jérôme Bel and Xavier Le Roy—lend themselves poorly to sacralization. But nothing could be less certain (to be convinced otherwise, one only need to see a present-day DADA or Fluxus exhibition). A partial response lies in the very titles: Jérôme Bel en 3 sec. 30 sec. 3 min. 30 min. 3 h. and “Rétrospective” by Xavier Le Roy. In order to counteract the crystallizing and totalizing phenomena particular to monographic exhibitions, Boris Charmatz and Jérôme Bel decided to slice the timeline of the work and sample it using various media: photography, text, video extract, film, web site. Formally, it was still an exhibition; but structurally, the monographic format was fragmented from within in order to achieve a sort of “partial totality.” In the case of the “Rétrospective”, the substitution of “de” (of) with “par” (by), and the use of quotation marks, turn the project into a (generic) retrospective, the author of which is Xavier Le Roy, without necessarily being its object. The format, “retrospective,” is thus separated from the referent-artist meant to guarantee its validity, in order to become a new piece by Xavier Le Roy: une “retro-prospective,” in a way, departing from Xavier Le Roy in order to be projected into the unknown.
This clears the way for the answer to the second question: why these choreographers? The trajectory of their works and the paths of their research continue to intersect those formulated by Musée de la danse at its inception. Let’s cite, among others: (1) the place of discourse; (2) specification of the conditions of representation; (3) the question of the object; (4) the production of formats; (5) relations between history, archive, and subjectification; or (6) relations between the public, work, and the creative process. Examples are innumerable: if we compare Jérôme Bel’s series of portraits, starting with Véronique Doisneau, devoted to dancers with different background and styles, and the “Rétrospective”, what do we see? In the first case, the choreographer uses material from life and work to create a montage for the stage; in the second, the choreographer invites dancers to appropriate working material—his own—in order to create a montage in a museum. One of Xavier Le Roy’s projects, E.X.T.E.N.S.I.O.N.S, developed between 1999 and 2001, crystallizes most of the points cited earlier. This project of research into new modes of working and production “brought together twenty or so artists and/or theorists to participate in public events taking place in gyms, 35 hours per week.” Bocal, a nomadic and temporary school launched by Boris Charmatz in 2002, or, say, expo zéro, and Xavier Le Roy’s conception of “the choreographic” have in common the same usage of “dance” as a master key that opens the work of bodies onto its sociological, economical, and perceptual conditions. In all these cases, the boundary between rehearsal, production, space of reflection, exhibition, and representation is dissolved and redefined by the different designations (working process, school, or exhibition). From this perspective, the experiments conducted by Jérôme Bel and Xavier Le Roy constitute the “conditions of possibility” of an institution like the Musée de la danse: the theoretical and practical “ground” where it ventures from exhibition to exhibition. One can therefore infer that Jérôme le Bel and Xavier Le Roy are the Musée de la danse.
Second point: the creation of exhibitions, each containing the germ of a new definition of the institution thus constitutes one of the specificities of this “museum in action.” This is the same dynamic that lends its formal aspect to the museum as such, and distinguishes it from, on the one hand, centers for choreography with predetermined missions, and, on the other, temporary projects such as E.X.T.E.N.S.I.O.N.S or Bocal. When the museum opens its doors to an exhibition created in a different context, what happens to this performative dynamic (“I am but what I do”)? Does the museum of dance become a “real” museum, that is, a simple physical space ready to house an object? “Rétrospective” by Xavier Le Roy, if it is an exhibition, relies, on the one hand, on the dancers entrusted with the interpretation and appropriation of the choreographic material, and, on the other, on the path taken by each visitor. In this context, the museum becomes the project—confronting its own space (physical, symbolic, and theoretical) with a form capable in its turn of reinterpreting it differently: this is “The Museum stripped bare by its exhibitions, even.” One can therefore infer that for the duration of the exhibition, the Musée de la danse is going to be the “Rétrospective”.
Third point: if one thinks about it, the project proposed by Xavier Le Roy for the Rebutoh was already a “Retrospective.” Alone on the stage, the artist improvised with the Butoh-materials—books, videos, memories—using them to produce a “Retrospective (of Butoh) by Xavier Le Roy.” All the temporalities—of memory, of note-taking, of elaboration—were brought together by the format of the piece. The difference between the exhibition and the performance resides, in the end, in the way the temporal dimension is modified or redeployed: “strangling time” in the case of the Preview of the Musée de la danse, in the form of a night of performances in slow motion; fragmenting time, in Jérôme Bel en 3 sec. 30 sec. 3 min. 30 min. 3 h.; “using, consuming, or producing time” in the “Rétrospective” by Xavier Le Roy where rooms are occupied for 6 hours by dancers at work, and where each member of the audience is invited to produce a retrospective depending on his or her own perspective.
Rebutoh, Retrospective: being dance and museum, it’s all in the resuming, in reappropriation, in the production of doubles, of phantoms: enclosing them in photographs or giving them rooms to haunt, dates to enumerate, names to recite. In the discussions prior to expo zéro, Boris Charmatz expressed the idea that all choreographers could—with their permission—become works in the Musée de la danse. It would seem that with “Rétrospective” par Xavier Le Roy, the problem becomes somewhat complicated. Xavier Le Roy is perhaps part of the Musée de la danse, but the Musée de la danse is also part of the “Rétrospective” par Xavier Le Roy. Through its objectives, the way of managing time and space, the direct involvement of the public and of the dancers in setting it in motion, and the notion of open work that it entails, the “Rétrospective” par Xavier Le Roy is, well, a “Musée de la danse” par Xavier Le Roy. Yet keeping in mind that Xavier Le Roy is (also) a performance of Jérôme Bel, perhaps one should rather say, “Musée de la danse” par Xavier Le Roy de Jérôme Bel? (Jérôme Bel’s “Musée de la danse” by Xavier Le Roy).