For Jérôme Bel(2021), which he describes as “auto-bio-choreo-graphic”, he lends himself to his own exercise and delivers his personal account of a life of dance. The eponymous project of a founding piece of his repertoire, Jérôme Bel(1995) is not so much a return to the initial point, nor even an assessment made after the fact, as a genealogy of the driving forces of his work, where the personal is linked to the artistic and political. The choreographer’s performance address, alone on stage, responds to the broadcasting of filmed archives and reactivates the memory of gestures, scores, and biographical facts that the discourse comes to put in correspondence. Jérôme Bel shares his doubts, his commitments, his failures as well as his infatuations. Combining narrative and meaning, the piece articulates fragments of his life, his career and his intellectual project to reveal their common structures.
Based on ecologism, Jérôme Bel has invented a format in which he remains as the author and whoever can present the piece in whichever place. In this year’s Ob/Scene Festival, machine critic Lee Young June takes the role of Jérôme Bel on stage.

Text and videos: Jérôme Bel
Assistant: Maxime Kurvers
Direction and translation of the text: Lee Young June
French Proofreading: Cho Hwayeon
With: Lee Young June, Frédéric Seguette, Claire Haenni, Gisèle Pelozuelo, Yseult Roch, Olga De Soto, Peter Vandenbempt, Sonja Augart, Simone Verde, Esther Snelder, Nicole Beutler, Eva Meyer Keller, Germana Civera, Benoît Izard, Ion Munduate, Cuqui Jerez, Juan Dominguez, Carine Charaire, Hester Van Hasselt, Dina Ed Dik, Amaia Urra, Carlos Pez, Henrique Neves, Johannes Sundrup, Véronique Doisneau, Damian Bright, Matthias Brücker, Remo Beuggert, Julia Häusermann, Tiziana Pagliaro, Miranda Hossle, Peter Keller, Gianni Blumer, Matthias Grandjean, Sara Hess, Lorraine Meier, Simone Truong, Akira Lee, Aldo Lee, Houda Daoudi, Cédric Andrieux, Chiara Gallerani, Taous Abbas, Stéphanie Gomes, Marie-Yolette Jura, Nicolas Garsault, Vassia Chavaroche, Magali Saby, Ryo Bel, Sheila Atala, Diola Djiba, Michèle Bargues, La Bourette, Catherine Gallant
Images: Herman Sorgeloos, Marie-Hélène Rebois, Aldo Lee, Pierre Dupouey, Olivier Lemaire, Chloé Mossessian
Artistic advice and executive direction : Rebecca Lasselin
Production manager: Sandro Grando
Production of the videos: CND Centre national de la danse, R.B. Jérôme Bel, Opéra national de Paris/Telmondis in association with France 2 with the participation of Mezzo and of Centre national de la cinématographie, Theater Hora, French Institute Alliance Française - FIAF
Production of the performance: R.B. Jérôme Bel
Production of the local version: Ob/Scene Festival
Coproduction: Ménagerie de Verre (Paris), La Commune centre dramatique national d’Aubervilliers, Festival d’Automne à Paris, R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris)
The writing of the text of this performance is part of the creative process of Sustainable theatre, conceived by Katie Mitchell, Jérôme Bel and Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, and coproduced by STAGES - Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift cofunded by European Union: Dramaten Stockholm, National Theater & Concert Hall, Taipei, NTGent, Piccolo Teatro di Milano -Teatro d’Europa, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II Lisboa, Théâtre de Liège, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, Croatian National Theatre Zagreb, Slovene National Theatre Maribor, Trafo Budapest, MC93 Maison de la culture de Seine-Saint-Denis
Thanks to Caroline Barneaud, Daphné Biiga Nwanak, Jolente De Keersmaeker, Zoé De Sousa, Florian Gaité, Chiara Gallerani, Danielle Lainé, Xavier Le Roy, Marie-José Malis, Frédéric Seguette, Christophe Wavelet

R.B Jérôme Bel is supported by the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Ile-de-France, French Ministry for Culture.
Jérôme Bel is associated artist to Le Quartz(Brest) and Centre national de la danse (Pantin).
For ecological reasons, R.B/ Jérôme Bel company doesn’t travel by plane anymore.

Rehearsal Assistants: Kang Minjeong, Bae Yoonju, Yu Yeoil, Lee Jieun

Since the 1990’s, when he underwent a transformation from a dancer to a choreographer, Bel has sturdily pioneered the self-reflexive approach to question and reconfigure the very conditions upon which dance is constituted as an art form, away from the formative expressivity of “modern” dance. His somewhat anthropological methodologies involve critical investigations upon and incorporations of the physical, social, historical, and institutional apparatuses as the bases for creative practices and artistic experiences. Though often referred to misleadingly by critics and scholars as “non-danse” to denote his elimination of anesthetized spectacles or displays of talents, as Bel himself makes clear, his oeuvres are far from ‘rejecting’ dance; rather, they celebrate dance with the shared joy of investigative attention to the very foundation of the act of dancing. The aim of his meta-choreographic endeavors is to emancipate dance as well as the spectatorship from the totalitarian modes of theatrical exhibitionism.

Past Works

• 2005, Modafe 2005 ‹The show must go on›
• 2007, Springwave Festival ‹Pichet Klunchun and myself›
• 2010, Festival Bo:m ‹Véronique Doisneau›, ‹Lutz Förster›
• 2012, Festival Bo:m ‹Cédric Andrieux›
• 2013, Festival Bo:m ‹Disabled Theater›