For Kernel, Pierre Pontvianne worked on the idea of a heart: the invisible centre around which a very physical kind of dance is organised, where the finesse of the composition and unexpected occurrences find a surprising equilibrium.

Progressive genesis, an ensemble intertwined, evasions, extractions… While moments of fusion and rupture between the trio come one after another, the tension and clarity of the movement marks the choreographic material, as striking points of encounter between the performers emerge, as if out of nowhere. The multitude of coincidences, echoes and rebounding of the bodies confer upon Kernel a very singular musicality. They constitute a vivacious opus, both hypnotic and fascinating.

Reinforced by the assumed simplicity of the set design and dramaturgy, Kernel generates an organised form of chaos, totally integrated by the performers Jazz Barbé, Léna Pinon Lang and Clément Olivier. There is a kind of torrent in Kernel that seems as though it could extend well beyond the piece itself.

“… With Kernel, I cut up and assembled, dismantled and amassed the movement… I confronted it with a tumult of bodies that I situate at the convergence of the pictorial, the mathematical and the hyper-physicality of the dance. What touches me is the force of the performer, in their capacity to execute a very precise composition without ever forgetting their own freedom of interpretation; their capacity to understand a context without ever renouncing their own artistic singularity. An essential element of the creation (i.e. the individuality of interpretation), which I understand to be the very expression of the term art-vivant, in other words “living” art…” Pierre Pontvianne. 

As is often the case when one contemplates Pierre Pontvianne’s choreographic work, something imprints itself within us, like an affirmation both existential and necessary:  that of the sensitive recognition in their own right of each individual at the heart of each group.