Project 31 - Xavier Le Roy

Project Summary

Kaldor Public Art Projects in collaboration with Carriageworks presented French choreographer and artist Xavier Le Roy.

This three-part project saw Le Roy work with artistic collaborator Scarlet Yu, and 18 Australian performers to create the groundbreaking new work Temporary Title, 2015. For the first time in Kaldor Public Art Projects history, the public were invited to experience the creative development of the project through a series of open rehearsals. Le Roy also performed his seminal solo work Self Unfinished (1998), which was presented in Australia for the first time.

Over the past two decades, Le Roy has collaborated with numerous acclaimed artists around the world to create his works. In 2012, Le Roy was invited by Laurence Rassel to create his first exhibition Retrospective at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, solidifying him as a key figure in the recent dialogue between choreography and contemporary art. This exhibition was later presented to critical acclaim at Centre Pompidou, Paris, and MoMA PS1 in New York. Le Roy’s work Untitled, 2012, was presented at the 27th Kaldor Public Art Project, 13 Rooms, and was recognised as one of the strongest and most resonant pieces in the exhibition.

Temporary Title, 2015 was later performed at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in September, 2016 and for the Taipei Biennale, 2016/2017.

Xavier Le Roy

Temporary Title, 2015
20 – 22 November 2015
Track 8, Carriageworks

Open rehearsals
5, 12, 18 & 19 November
Carriageworks

Self Unfinished
17-19 November
Bay 17, Carriageworks

Date

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Temporary Title, 2015

Temporary Title, 2015, experiments with the process of pattern recognition, exploring forms which are not quite distinguishable as human - yet not completely anything else - and the idea of movement as a continuous process of transformation. The performers transition between strange and familiar forms and formations, challenging our perceptions of the human body and its capacity for physical expression and representation. The piece does not utilise props or costumes and the peformers are naked throughout the exhibition. This neutrality allows the transitory movements and conversations to remain the core of the visitor’s experience.

Le Roy works at the forefront of choreographic and dance practice, representing the most contemporary developments of the form, and presents Temporary Title, 2015, in an exhibition context rather than in the theatre. His practice explores facets of the relationship between performers and spectators, using movement as his medium. By calling the exhibition Temporary Title, 2015, he alludes to the state of constant flux which marks and defines the work. Le Roy describes the exhibition as a continually transforming landscape, where the visitor shifts between observer and contributor to the collective experience.

Collaborators: Natalie Abbott, Christine Babinskas, Geraldine Balcazar, Georgia Bettens, Eugene Choi, Matthew Day, Lauren Eiko, Peter Fraser, Ryuichi Fujimura, Alice Heyward, Becky Hilton, David Huggins, Marcus McKenzie, Kathryn Puie, Amaara Raheem, Darcy Wallace, Adam Warburton and Ivey Wawn.

Temporary Title, 2015, is free to the public and bookings are not required.

Open Rehearsals

A former molecular biologist, Le Roy brings a deep, critical curiosity to his collaborative experimental process. Rather than instructing his performers to move using a specific technique, direction or tempo, he proposes ideas to be discussed and actualised in movement and form. For the development of Temporary Title, 2015, he invites the audience through a series of open rehearsals to participate in this unique process.

The four open rehearsals offer members of the public first-hand, intimate insights into the choreographer's distinctive creative process. Participants will assist Le Roy, collaborator Scarlet Yu, and the 18 Australian performers to engage in a dialogue that will shape the new work through collective experiences. The dialogue will be opened further through a series of written reflections and conversations contributed to by the public, hosted on our blog.

The open rehearsals are free to the public. Please reserve your place here.

Self Unfinished

This seminal solo work was first performed in 1998 and presents the choreographer’s early experiments with the ‘performer’s body’ and its relationship to the spectator. Unlike Temporary Title, 2015, this work utilises the traditional constraints of a theatre environment - together the two works offer complementary perspectives of his renowned practice.

"A gripping mental space. Head over heels, the dancer’s body is transformed in real time into a series of hallucinogenic, morphing aberrations…based on unwritten laws and a disquieting, inhuman rhythm. Xavier Le Roy taps into a new field where scientific and social data is transferred into imaginary representations of the body."
- Curator and art critic François Piron

Self-Unfinished is free to the public. Please reserve your seat here.

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Xavier Le Roy, Scarlet Yu, John Kaldor and Lisa Havilah discuss Temporary Title, 2015

Xavier Le RoyBack to top

Xavier Le Roy is a celebrated choreographer, dancer and performance artist. Over the past two decades, he has collaborated with numerous acclaimed dancers and artists around the world. Le Roy’s work Untitled, 2012, was presented at the 27th Kaldor Public Art Project, 13 Rooms, and was recognised as one of the strongest and most resonant pieces in the exhibition.

In 2009, Le Roy began to create works for museums and galleries including the Tate Modern and the Hayward Gallery in London. In 2012, he produced the exhibition Retrospective for the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona, and later presented an edition of that work to critical acclaim at Centre Pompidou and MoMa, PS1 in New York in 2014. In recent decades, he has performed his works worldwide. His collaborators include renowned artists such as Jérôme Bel, Tino Sehgal and Yvonne Rainer. Between 1991 and 1995, Le Roy worked with the Compagnie de l’Alambic in Paris and from 1992 to 1997 he performed with the group Detektor in Berlin.

Le Roy has been artist-in-residence at the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work has been shown in many international festivals and institutions, including Tanz im August in Berlin, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul and the Julia Stoschek Collection in Dusseldorf.