" Prières " Group Performance - Jean Daniel Fricker

Prières 

Group Performance in situ
December 2007 and January 2008, 6 weeks in Hampi, India
Direction: Jean Daniel Fricker
With: Jean Daniel Fricker, Céline Angèle, Emilia Tau, Sara Pulici, Chiara Santel, Johan Swartwagher, Leonardo Cristiani

Photo Adam Łach Lunaris

" In 2006, after the suicide of Claudio Borghi, in my opinion the grandfather
of street art in Italy, came to me the need of a Group, that I founded in 2007
and which still doesn’t have a name but which could be very well be called…
I search in particular the unique and deep existence of everyone, in a shared space.
The first performance was given in the kingdom in ruins of Vijayanagar, near Hampi, India.
I called it: " Prières " - A tribute to Claudio Borghi, swordswallower .
It lasted 6 weeks and 4 nights.


A fabulous pilgrimage of dance and juggling. Walking like someone searching for water,
in some unknown place, where people, Indians, silentely open their eyes, where children jump
ecstatic through our balls. In a village one morning, and then…suddenly vanished, 4 days later
here we are again, and then… yet disappeared.
Sometimes a rock, sometimes a fisherman, a child, a photographer, 1000 frogs, a bus,
just the shadow, another sun.
Each morning begins in the dark of the night.
Each morning here, a new dance comes along.
No time for why, just incredible moments where the bodies listen,
watching with their countless eyes.
The bodies are shaking just like a new beginning. New dancing spring ! "

Jean Daniel Fricker


At this occasion I invited the photographer Adam Łach Lunaris, which I met in London, who came the last week of performance where we started our collaboration on his 'luna-graphy'.

Photo Adam Łach Lunaris

Photo Adam Łach Lunaris

Photo Adam Łach Lunaris

Photo Adam Łach Lunaris

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] chambre intérieure [ Performance's process - Jean Daniel Fricker

] chambre intérieure [

I experiment a radical body process ] chambre intérieure [ 
, inner chamber,
a kind of non-dance in which the body would say yes to any moment, any space.
I intend a dance of the moment, not a linear construction
but the verticality of momentum based on intuition and receptivity.

I try to make myself available to each moment every single one, stubbornly.

I give more attention to the vibration of the atmosphere than to the visual rendering,
form, or movement. I am questioning about the possibility of not looking myself
having the experience as it is exposed to the gaze of others.
I propose for instance to give as much attention to the immobility
and the silence, than to the movement itself.

Jean Daniel Fricker

Cambodia, Photo Adam Łach Lunaris

     


You are not investing the space, the space is investing you.

Céline Angèle




" I do not know. Céline suggests me some words,
then I try, with the requirement that I’ve been given today,
to experience physically these words.
Could be Duras, Rilke, Hölderlin, Bram Van Velde.
The meaning remains incomprehensible and open,
but in each moment, without understanding, I try to be permeable to those words.
I think that the words are born from a physical relation with the world.
While everything seems about to end, I make an effort to be at the beginning,
to be dead, to be alive. I try to let act the words, to let them born,
in the particles that compose this body,
in the space
in you. "
Jean Daniel Fricker



Performance's process: Jean Daniel Fricker
With the support of: Céline Angèle

" Lumière Liquide " Performance in situ: Rolland Martinez (Sound) - Jean Daniel Fricker

2011 August 1st, at 11:00 on the morning - Roquefort les Cascades (Ariège, France) 



It was not me dancing, 
she's running.
Jean Daniel Fricker

 Performance with Jean Daniel. Crossing the vibrations of my instruments with his dance, 
the presence of the audience, and the magic of the place. 
Rolland Martinez

Photos Sébastien Dupré



 

 

" Twin Ghost " Performance in situ: Hiroko Komiya (Sound) - Jean Daniel Fricker

2011 September 11th (Paris) historic buildings and apartment at Aloual's
 (architect: Henri Sauvage, decorator: Francis Jourdain)

Sunday 11th Sep in Paris, I accompanied for Jean Daniel's dance "Twin Ghost"
with sound of Stone, Water, Metal bowl, and Bells. Intimate deep moments.
Without being counscious of playing, I tried to listen on each object emits a sound spontaneously.
Momentary body and shining moon, they were in invisible resonance.
Hiroko Komiya

" Reconciliation " Installation, Performance in situ: Sébastien Dupré (Sound) - Jean Daniel Fricker
2011 September 22nd - Cave : Grotte de l’Homme Mort (Aude, France) - Approach : 1 hour



" 40,000 years

today a space opened

the souls of animals before they were gods

before the gods, what?

a butterfly

permeation

liquidity

were the tools of "knowledge".

To be born with

to be moved by

to be changed by.

Lions, bulls, rhinoceros

the wolves are walking with the child 

and then one day the child knows

he is something else, the child believe.

Permeability, it rained on my bones "
Jean Daniel Fricker


   
Just a quick note to write a big thank you for the moment of pure happiness and deep sharing in this improbable place (...) 
Strong Images, diaphanous light and return to the origins ...
Vincent L.


The Milky Way deep in the cave after 20 min of underground walking, as if the worlds from above were meeting those below.
Anonymous






" vidA MORte " Performance in situ: Jean Daniel Fricker
2011 November 22nd for sunset, Castro de S.Paio in Labruge. Near Porto, PORTUGAL





Photos Ines Miguel, Teresa Santos

" We arrive and you are standing there belonging.
We find our places. I've been here many times before and today is
different. You keep moving, looking fragile and strong, like if the
atmosphere you create with your presence is supporting your body. I let
myself become a part of this. I watch every movement from inside of you,
and I realise this is also about me, somehow we are all together in this
experience.

I'm standing hold by the wind, the winds that blowed and the others
that will blow, and by the silence between them.
This place is speaking to me and through me.
These old walls watch my back and secretly in a silent whisper they are
telling me to go on.
I step very gently every step of the way, I don't want to leave visible
traces of my physical presence. My feet are receptive and my body is
opening. I am the sunset and soon I'll be light. Now. A part of me just
died and the entire universe is living in me. My personal story is crying in
this body and disapearing at the same time. There are no borders
between me and the world: skin, heart and spirit are melting, loving and
embracing. I wish... Is it me wishing, or is it humanity in the presence of
these brothers and sisters surrounding me? Merci. "

Teresa Santos


> Video extract of the performance vidA MORte





" Au bois de la comtesse " Performance in situ: Jean Daniel Fricker
2012 April 16th at noon in the beech forest known as " bois de la comtesse " near Ceret (Pyrenees mountain, south France)

It was at 1021 meters altitude, just after an unexpected morning snow, and during strong cold wind, 20 people came.








" Fleur de feu " Performance in situ: Lisa Pujari (Voice: Raag Bhupali) - Matteo De Bellis (Tempura) - Jean Daniel Fricker
2012 May 4th at 2 pm in the ruined church of Sant Marti, near Corsavy (Pyrenees, south France)

  




" Agua impropria para conumo " Performance in situ: Jean Daniel Fricker
2013 March 13th in the morning at 11 AM in Calçada das Carquejeiras, Fontainhas, Porto, Portugal
Under the bridge in "tanques da roupa" where people wash the clothes.

Photo Teresa Santos

" TabulA RasA " , " Laissez-moi devenir " and " au bord du silence "  are also part of that process.







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" TabulA RasA " Installation, Performance solo - Jean Daniel Fricker

 TabulA RasA 

  

 Installation, Performance solo

This title and the installation have been selected for the "première" in February 2011,
 

we have kept them in tribute to the victims of 2011 March 11th, past, present and future.



 

 

Photo: Georges Karam - 2012 March 11th - La pièce à musique, in Henri Sauvage building, Paris

 
Installation of various white clothes covering the stage

Moments of the process ] chambre intérieure [

Installation, Performance solo: Jean Daniel Fricker


With the support of: Céline Angèle



Duration: Undetermined





Shortly before going on stage with "Tabula Rasa" in June 2011, a friend, Hiroko told me a story
 that deeply moved me, not only because we were in Japan during the earthquake.


Her friend had lost her father. He had been missing for several weeks following the tsunami.


They were looking around with hope. Some weeks later,
 the sea has brought his body on the beach, right outside his house.
 This is what I am longing for, a body-flesh, Nikutai, a body left to itself, going by itself, at home.

Jean Daniel Fricker
 


 

Jean Daniel Fricker undertakes 

an exploration-experience, to inner and limitless spaces.

 This crystalline and cellular dance is a non-form state,

“another” intimacy; intimate and universal.



A dance that serves the moment, innumerable.

 A receptacle body that mediates what passes through.

 From this penetration of vibrations radiates 
an atmosphere,
 the offer of a bare existence.
 A life that searches itself, both wild and divine.
The matter itself, who explores itself: 

a substance, that at each moment new,
 listens itself,
 offers itself to the becoming.

Céline Angèle




Performed at the XII th Butoh Festival, Centre Culturel Bertin Poirée Paris, 2011, 
La Pièce à musique (Paris), Contagiarte (Porto), and Studio Ki (Graz, Austria) in 2012


Teaser: http://vimeo.com/jeandanielfricker/tabula-rasa



 ] chambre intérieure [

I experiment a radical body process ] chambre intérieure [ 
, inner chamber,
a kind of non-dance in which the body would say yes to any moment, any space.
I intend a dance of the moment, not a linear construction
but the verticality of momentum based on intuition and receptivity.

I try to make myself available to each moment every single one, stubbornly.

I give more attention to the vibration of the atmosphere than to the visual rendering,
form, or movement. I am questioning about the possibility of not looking myself
having the experience as it is exposed to the gaze of others.
I propose for instance to give as much attention to the immobility
and the silence, than to the movement itself.

Jean Daniel Fricker 



 

Photo Georges Karam - 2012 March 11th - La pièce à musique, Paris

 




Critics:
 
 
"It was definitively beautiful. Your action is intense, out of time, out of space and totally in at the same time…"
Emanuela DeCecco, Art critic


 
" I cried "  
Hiroko Komiya, musician

 


" TabulA RasA…a space-time hanging where Jean Daniel Fricker seems to invite us 
to dive into our own inner chamber. Astonishment, discomfort, surprise, amazement. 
As if the room was transformed into a giant scanner able to record our increased sensations.
In fact audience get to become aware of the myriad of vibrations that drive them. From the stage
to the audience, this artist knows for sure to be available, at each moment, at the place and 
at the audience which he brings with gentleness, to live, by his side and in his own inner space,
this radical exploration."



Rosaline Deslauriers, actress-musician and postdoctorante (EHESS)



"

 " Butoh of the future "


 Sarah Warde, actress



" 

I try to stay on my feelings. I saw "TabulA RasA"; it was first nonsense, this time becoming elastic
and I could not remain indifferent; there was a common experience which I could not take the sense.
I was there like in front of a painting, it was made to be watched. A painting has to be watched:
There is first the gesture of the painter and the emergence of landscapes; subjects; seasons; events. 
Effect of movement in a painting or in an inner dance is perceived by each one of us.
Time is a way to access to sense; to let us be amazed by incomprehension or by intangibility; therefore sensations, 
to let us being touched in the unconsciousness. Being caressed by the wind. The wind is felt but not seen: sensation. 
We see the wind because we see the leaves of the tree moving: sensation.
Contemplation becomes inexhaustible. It emerges the poetry of intimacy; from the contrast of shadows and lights. 
I love. Finally! I could say more."



Clementine Balair, painter

 

" It was as if the body of Jean Daniel was not made of flesh and blood, but of a matter almost cosmic, in the instant before it crumbles. A fragile and at the same time eternal matter : I saw the space around him, but at the same time, it was as if he was out of space, of this space. In an absolute space.
This performance could have lasted 10 minutes, as 5 hours or two days, it depended on the touch of his skin with the breath of the universe. (…) Sensations were made of fragility but also universality."
Daniela Gamba, actress, dancer, editor

Ueno Park,Tokyo, March 11th 2011, " Earth Dance ", Ph: Mugi. " TabulA RasA " Ph: Hiroko Komiya , Kazuya Nagaya. Paris Butoh Festival 2011

 


" A body carried from present to present,
Recolled by an inner voice
You return to yourself ...
from another world
In every movement a cry to an invisible cellular travel,
lapels of meat
Every time a fatality, a set free existence, a sure death
Then a flood tide, a sudden backwash movement
In the carpet rippled by human presences
emaciated bodies are evoked
and a lapped body, as if was there by chance, by real destiny
A thousand lives make you a shield
Faceless
a wave walks on human legs

Saved existence, eternally in danger
in each movement a rough caress, which leads to weep
While the stillness carries you
you speak the dense language of the fetus

One death at a time
in a plain of invisibile bodies
each movement a backwash

A movement coming from far away goes back to itself and harbours the dance of Jean Daniel Fricker:
an hand trembles, the flesh moves forward: it tells underground memories

A body traces the story of its existence, a mysterious journey to the source of movement,
the show of the invisibile takes shape, an existence offered on a tray of flesh

Made of beauty that ravishes and upsets the ordinary, bread offered on a table laid of faceless souls.

Living flesh trembling with truth, an offer to the invisibile and a love token: tabula rasa

More than a dance, a foreboding,
more than a movement, a dialogue among cells.
Flesh that discovers to be alive, to be fragile, to be vulnerable,
but determined to be born
An ancient and immortal resonance
An inner landscape which inhabits the viewer in every single moment
and at the end
in the emptiness of the stage
make him cry for a new exile

All time that running through you - belongs to you "
Sara Pulici, dancer, writer

Photo Christophe Staber, Studio Ki, Graz 2012

     


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" La Femme Ailée " Dance: Celine Angele - Direction: Jean Daniel Fricker

La Femme Ailée 

Solo Dance: Céline Angèle
Direction: Jean Daniel Fricker



 
Duration: 50 minutes


Incandescent whiteness in pale cloth spred around her,

she was looking like a butterfly, a flower born from dawn,

and softly coloured by red in the emerging morning light.

Wreathed with flowers, from her body torn by joy spring up her crazy prayer,

she was looking like a flower born from mud, a body born from earth, rising to ecstasy.
Céline Angèle

Photo Adam Łach Lunaris




























To Klo

To Bonne Maman

To Princess, young disabled indian beggar

To Japanese children






Creation 2009 Premiere in Xth Butoh Festival of Paris

Re-creation 2011









Critics:




" Shattered by the exquisite ambiguity of Celine Angele in " La Femme Ailee ",
a demanding dance on the edge of precipice, a permanent emotional ecstasy."

Georges Karam




" the body's testimony
Flowers on the ground, and there she is. Enclosed in a black dress, emaciated, eyes closed and smiling lips,
Dreaming of her existence? Silence, some movement: an inner joy radiates from the slowness of her flight.
As an irresistible evidence - it is the state, not the action that we feel, why?
 The dress falls, the body tied,
and the tissue sticks like a second skin. On the ground, as in the mud, her few meters journey resonates in this parisian cave.
An amazing story of beautiful meetings, from others travels to other continents,
where she would have brought invisible people and their happiness of existence, the intensity. By which action?

The body testifies, both vulnerable and strong, bends and breaks up, comes up against the limits, dies and reborn.
Fingers twisted, for pain maybe, during the time that piano notes are shelled.
To enable us to guess both the monstrosity and humanity, she's stretched in the middle like a string between the two.

Ecstasy is stripped as naked skin, in an absolute poverty, an offering as only expression of the universal.

She shows the other. on the ground, the flowers. She gives. "
Guy Degeorges, pour Un Soir ou Un Autre,

Photo Georges Karam



Céline Angèle's blog






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" Femme(s) " Group Performance - Direction: Jean Daniel Fricker

 Femme(s)

Group Performance

Direction: Jean Daniel Fricker

Assistant: Céline Angèle

With: Céline Angèle, Sophie Cutillas, Anne-Cécile Deliaud, Emmanuelle de Gasquet, Sara Pulici, Iva Tratnik

Special Guest: my mother
Duration: approximately 50 minutes 

 

Drawing: Iva Tratnik




   


" 
Life is to disappear.

Directing is also about learning to disappear.

I wish to help the diversity of everyone, unique and yet with the others.

I wish also that it breaths, that it keeps on borning in the moment.

In 1993 Kazuo Ohno said: "I want my dance to born on stage, like the cry of a newborn,

it's the incarnation of this spontaneous cry that matters."

"The dance is created in each moment. It has nothing to do with form."

I've dreamed of his death two months before it happened. He's very often in my dreams, 

the other day we danced, and he was throwing red petals. Like that, my mother will be there, throwing red petals.

Emmanuelle has eaten her own mother when she was 13, the ashes.

In 2001 Sara asked me, what is Butoh for you? I answered without hesitating, Butoh is my mother.

One night I climbed a ladder with my mother on my back. 
The water flows.

Does the river exist ?



B O D Y,

I think it is something feminine, the earth, the matter, also the disapperence.

Yes, B O D Y , feminine. "

Jean Daniel Fricker








Première: 2012 August 27th , at "La Ferme du Riuferrer", 
Arles sur Tech (Pyrénées Orientales, South France) 


Teaser: http://vimeo.com/jeandanielfricker/femmes


 

"Something about....Femme(s)


For each stroke of chalk a day of the creation...
For each stroke of comb a cosmic disorder...

There are presences who enter without permission, porcelain darkness never fully illuminated,
long shadows from which the movements of the soul are unraveled.
Are those the flotsam? The feminine bodies?
Like worlds balanced between fires and broken steps, made out of sudden struggles and fragile stillnesses
of dried flowers, women’s bodies are making their way... lashes to lashes, sometimes sitting on their silence,
sometimes lashed by their whiplash. They are just fully awakened and insubordinate flesh.

Every now and then we have to die to go in an elsewhere, swallow our own mother
to look after her, surrender our tainted virginity to reborn women.


And while I see me dancing, under my feet, chasms and flowers."

Sara Pulici

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" i " Performance solo: dance, juggling, contortion - Jean Daniel Fricker

 i

Performance solo: dance, juggling, contortion
 

Photo Annalisa Savoca

Performance solo: dance, juggling, contortion

Duration: approximately 50 minutes 

Interpretation, Choreography and Direction: Jean Daniel Fricker







" Barely a thousand years ago I was naked and dumb

I struggle to remember but there’s only emptiness

something, something escapes from it

its scream, its form, upside down its exclamation

nobody has a name nobody has a name

I am but movement and scratches

but be careful, I did not choose there is no choice

it is always the necessity

it imposed itself

posed as a knife planted "


Jean Daniel Fricker

Valladolid 2010 Photo Raquel Prieto

   



Critic:




That’s how I saw you dancing
 

 "It is not enough to undress. We must lay bare. Get out from ourself straigth away, to collapse in ourself. Twisting and distorting. Giving birth to ourselves vulgarly, legs apart, and get confused with the unfinished child squirted out from the legs, like a ball catched at the crossroads of chance, by accident. Play like at the very beginning, as in myths, born from the mud of Gods, and collapse again. Repeat the wild creation escaped from the mud. A joyful and ecstatic ceremony, inside oneself and its broken edges. Between the legs. Shaking as a ghost standing at attention in front of a ridiculous Death, which is only dialoguing with ancient drums, mythical birds. Stripping our own skins. Eating our own clothes.

But where have we seen all this ? No doubt long time ago, before we were born. Jean Daniel Fricker dance at the origin, outside any time. He drifts between the old man and the just-in-born baby, between the after death and the before birth, remembering nothing but impulses, and without any future. He dances between chaos and Form, uncertain but blinding. Organs and members intertwined; from this almost confused contortion, balls are springing up. Jonglorsion which gives the liberating appearance of an order, as an ephemeral manifestation soon disappeared in the collapse. Some sacred which could have been and that we anyway are contemplating, in his fleeting emergence as a nostalgia that we have lost. "

Jean-Noël Pelen (Researcher at CNRS)





Performed about 60 times between 2003 and 2010

Best Performer Award (Premio de Interpretación)
at the Xth Festival Internacional de Teatro y Artes de Calle in Valladolid, Spain 2009

Photo Annalisa Savoca

About Innovation in Juggling

Let’s get into the subject directly! I have never invented anything, everything is already there. I experiment with the matter, transforming it.
What do you wanted to become when you were a child ? I wanted to be a frog, a circus frog, now I " twist myself as a pig under a knife " (1). I have a back pain today, I hurted myself while I was asleep, I throw myself on the floor shouting and then I hurt myself sleeping, it makes no sense. "Who which is normal and sane would walk on a wire or speak in verse?
It's too crazy. Man or woman? Monster for sure. "(2)
I feel that juggling is a way to get rid of "the spirit of heaviness" (3), to move forward, not necessarily to a new path, but to our own path, as would be for a plant, an animal.
Who does invent something ? We wait and something comes along, then we throw it. And we wait again. Sometimes, miraculously are questions that are thrown.
Maybe there is evolution only through openness. Let’s open our limits, really, without caricatures, without ideas, without hiding behind a technique, but use it to show: weakness, joy, shadows, crazyness, flowers. Do not limit juggling to entertainment : the large audience doesn’t deserve only that. Let’s show, let’s try a little more what’s REAL, our body, its limits, the flesh itself... what a PARTY!


Jean Daniel Fricker
(Text published in the Juggling Magazine No. 36-September 2007)
Quotes : (1) Georges Bataille (2) Jean Genet (3) Friederich Nietzsche






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" The Blank Bird " Performance Solo: juggling, dance, contortion - Jean Daniel Fricker

The Blank Bird





Performance Solo: juggling, dance, contortion



Duration: 9 minutes 30 ( part from the performance " i " )

Interpretation, Choreography and Direction: Jean Daniel Fricker






A Tree helps sometimes the flight of a Bird,

sometimes it opens the heart of Mens

or just their eyes. 


Jean Daniel Fricker

Poland 2010 - Photo Lukasz Gdak

Critic:


" Jean-Daniel Fricker is a singular artist, such as found little.
First " jonglorsionniste ", he is the author of short peculiar pieces, closely combining juggling and contortion.
These are not " numbers "of circus but very beautiful choreographic poems, cleverly highlighted. The contrast between the lightness of juggling and the tortuous roughness of contortion is striking. The slowness and precision of the execution show an amazing ability of concentration, and moreover this quest for interiority that is the hallmark of great jugglers. (...) "

Jean-Michel Guy, former HEC, doctor of sociology, a researcher at the Ministry of Culture, September 2001






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