Ex Nihilo is a company that we direct around a shared desire: to regard public space as the work place and the site for our shows. Public space that we understand in all its richness and dimensions: spatial, historical, social, poetic… public space, quite simply as the other place for art ? Each of our choreographies is envisaged in situ and is strongly linked to the space in which it will be shown. The specific history of the site, the relationships that exist there, its atmosphere, all this “enriches” our writings, nourish the scenario and the set design of each one of them. We call these encounters with such places: Amalgame(s). Both performances and research, impregnated with feeling – ‘amal ‘al gam, the work of union, in Arabic – some of these encounters have formed shows that now figure in the company’s repertoire and are re-built every time they are shown… Others remain performances linked uniquely to a specific location.
The dance of Ex Nihilo develops the relationship between the dancers and their awareness of each other. It is a physical dance, reactionary, spontaneous. Movement is declared as being a way of “taking” a territory, or rather, the dancers borrow a space for the duration of the work or a show – a light, ephemeral appropriation which never excludes the “other”, the passer-by, the spectator, the citizen. A spontaneous dance, but written with purpose – logica l: here we are presenting you our creations, raw material of our work, critical texts – a multitude of fragments to facilitate the understanding of our approach and that which makes us dance.
