Claire Huber - No.oN

"No.oN is a piece that started by acknowledging a « no » ! By refusing the consent of the body that is demanded to a performer: their infamous « availability ». By refusing also the all-powerfulness of regular pulsations, that contradict our most surreptitious impulses. By refusing the alignment of our desires to a common law for the bodies. By refusing unisons, marches, four-beat bars…

However, instead of searching why we refuse what oppresses us, or an alternative to that oppression, I wanted to explore the refusal itself. It seemed to me as an ill-defined signal : « I cannot do that, my body does not want ». Moreover it implicitly revealed a facet of the body, the one that says no : a facet that arises when it does not follow the onward march imposed to it, when it does not digest, when it stumbles, when it stutters. When its materiality confronts and limits our desires, within the irregular beat of its collapses and its uprisings. To my mind, that contains the possible seeds of insurrectional bodies. With that no, the body does not display an anomaly, but on the contrary a very own language, an expression of negation that is always coupled and intertwined with its most celebrated opposite : the flow, the uninterrupted onward movement, the streaming.

That very own language is a language of rhythms. What flows (rhythm comes from the old Greek “rein”, which means to flow, very far from the beating idea of rhythm that we have today), and what interrupts the flow form a couple (« on » and « no ») that unfolds and punctuate time. No.oN rests indeed on a musical thinking that understands rhythm as a punctuation of time (unlike my piece As we drove short short horizon-lines that rather takes into account lengths of time). A similar understanding of rhythm inhabits Rebonds A for solo percussion by Iannis Xenakis, that serves as a base for the musical score of No.oN, that is to say that a simple beat develops into a massive punctuated sound streaming. This logic of punctuation delineates the space marked by the body, the time marked by the music and the phrasing of the poem marked by the couple of « no » and « on », whose palindromic quality in English justifies partly the use of this language for the composition of the poem."

TEAM / CREDITS

Direction, text and performance : Claire Huber
Sound performance : Stalin Blake
Music : derived from Rebonds, by Iannis Xenakis
In dramaturgical dialogue with : Alain Franco
Musical advise : Jean-Luc Plouvier/ICTUS ensemble
Light : to be defined
Costume : Zdravka Ivandija Kirigin (tbc)
Production : Inflexions vzw
Coproductions and partners: Teatroskop/a program initiated by the Institut Français in Paris, Le Lieu Unique, Needcompany, ICTUS ensemble, de school van Gaasbeek, Huis Herman Teirlinck, STUK, BUDA, Bunker/Stara Elektrana, La maison-poème, Flux Laboratory/Athens

Claire Huber creates performances at the crossroads of oral poetry, choreography, sound and music, writes and translates poetic texts, develops dramaturgical reflections around questions of orality in its contemporary and ancient forms, and collaborates tightly with new music and sound scenes.

She studied philosophy at E.H.E.S.S. (master, 2010) in Paris, and choreography and dramaturgy at Tanzfabrik (2013) in Berlin and at P.A.R.T.S. (research studios, on word x sound x movement, 2017), in Brussels.

A few selected work would be As we drove short short horizon-lines (2021), a performance of voices, languages, instruments and bodies that crosses borders on the road from Middle-East, the Balkans and Western Europe, which still tours extensively in Europe, And then we knew it was wind (2018), on the continuity between breath and winds and taking from E. Dickinson's poems, commissioned by Kinitiras in Athens, and The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor (2015), an installation exhibited at the Wexford Museum of Arts, Ireland. And to come : No.oN (2026), a scenic poem addressing the "body that says no", in dialogue with Iannis Xenakis' Rebonds.

Her research has led her to take part regularly to the contemporary music summer courses in Darmstadt, and to explore, over the years, microtonal music and epic prosody of Serbia with singer Svetlana Spajić. She has implemented workshops on “sound dramaturgies” gathering artists who incorporate sound in their compositional stage logics, and « listening and composition » that proposes a physical approach to listening.