The MC93 devotes a focus to the choreographer Olivia Grandville, newly appointed director of the CCN de la Rochelle. After stampede and before La War of the poorwe could see his play Klein, an hour of luminous conference on the immateriality of color (and it’s funny).
In 1959, Yves Klein gave a lecture on “The evolution of art towards the immaterial” at the Sorbonne. And it’s Olivia Grandville, in jeans, low-heeled boots, a white blouse and a black blazer, who portrays Iris Clert, the famous painter’s gallery owner. She presents him to us in a slightly offbeat way and we learn that Klein was mad about judo and that, above all, he had a thousand lives before turning blue.
Read the introduction to the conference instead:
Yves Klein is the son of painters. After studying at the National School of the Merchant Navy and the National School of Oriental Languages, he was successively a bookseller in Nice and a racehorse trainer in Ireland. In 1949, 1950 and 1951, he traveled throughout Europe. In 1952, he embarked for Japan where he studied ancient martial arts. He returns from Japan after having obtained the rank of black belt, 4th dan, from the Kodokan of Tokyo. He was then appointed technical director of the National Judo Federation of Spain in 1954. Having continued to paint during all this time, and already in his monochrome way since 1946, he published simultaneously The Fundamentals of Judo, at Bernard Grasset in Paris, and a collection of color reproductions of his works, at the Franco de Sarabia editions in Madrid, which, imported to Paris, began to draw attention to him from that time. In 1955, he decided to give up all judo activity for painting and came to live in Paris.
Let’s say it right away, we are dealing more with theater than with a dance piece. In her work, Olivia Grandville often leaves a lot of room for the texts, but it is rare for the movement to move to this point. Manuel Vallade in a chic suit is Yves Klein. Benoît de Villeneuve is on the music when he’s not playing the architect Werner Ruhnau, with whom the king of blue thought in an assumed way to make buildings with the wind. The critique of capitalism is at the heart of this story, between ranting and real thinking about art.
Emmanuel Gourmelin and Dominique Dijol (both black belt judokas) are ready to fight. In the light, for once, it’s not Yves Godin (another Yves genius of color, hey!), but Fabrice Le Fur who takes care of plunging the set into a blue halo, bluer and bluer .
The spectacle is the lecture performed. This long text has been cut up, sometimes reversed to give it an even more “sideways” flavor. Emmanuel Vallade portrays a demagogic, inhabited Klein, voice as sharp as the original, joining the gesture to the word. He almost dances his words. In 1959, Klein broke (for a time) with painting, therefore, and with blue. It started, Iris tells us, in 1957 during a funny opening where methylene blue cocktails were served, and where, above all, a sculpture made of blue balloons flew away, like a judoka before the fall.
The combat takes place essentially in slow motion. And like the voice of the actor, the gestures of the athletes become another movement, ultra codified by the rules of this martial art. The way the two athletes entangle each other becomes a pas de deux that is both massive and light.
As the conference unfolds, we understand that Olivia Grandville wonders about the immateriality of dance. What is certain is that this piece, like the previous ones, combines humor, elegance and intelligence.
With the three classic elements fire, air and water, the city of tomorrow will be built; it will finally be flexible, spiritual and immaterial. The idea, in space, of using pure energy to build for men no longer seems to be absurd in this order of ideas. In such a conception of architecture, it seems easy to understand that the disappearance of the picturesque and of painted reverie is inevitable, and fortunately because it is the picturesque that has killed all the real powers in man.
Klein is supported by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès as part of its program New Settings.
Kleinuntil April 17 and The war of the poor, from Friday 15 to Sunday 17 April, at the MC93. It is possible to see both shows on the same evening.
Visual: ©La Spirale de Caroline
