walk and talk it (excerpt)

• VIRGINIE BOBIN on Dispositions – Art 21 Summer 2011.

Rémy Héritier’s walk+talk, created for the first series in Vienna, also exists as an autonomous piece under the name of Dispositions. The piece explores its relationship to a particular venue, thus altering on each occurrence. In this way, while taking its specific context into account, Dispositions #8 breaks free from the constraints of the walk+talk system — one substantial constraint being the radically deconstructed scenic space designed by artist Alexander Schellow — to finally produce this ‘other’, highly awaited space. A series of danced movements — presented as so many documents or “sites” of  personal or collective memory yet to be activated — intermingle; a large photograph of the University of Moscow, embodying the fanstasmatic ‘outside’ of the theatre, and a wonderful text by Virginia Woolf, Words Fail Me — an ode to polysemy and the evocative power of words, whose meanings are forever eluding us as they become loaded with ever new connotations. By replacing “word” with “movement”, Rémy Héritier suddenly sheds light on how he apprehends his relationship to the spectator, in this space he took the time to designate for them: the collective production of multiple signifieds, where the question of dance’s intelligibility gives over to the question of the shared intelligence of the speaker and receiver.