Equinox
François Vinot’s photos don’t tell a story, they offer all possible stories. Without a libretto and in a minimalist setting, a contemporary and eternal choreography unfolds before our eyes. The voluptuousness of the materials, the exaltation of the colors, the sensuality of the make-up and hair, the velvety texture of the skin, the visual richness of the clothes (and one might be tempted to say the stage costumes, so much so that they seem to have been created for this fleeting moment) invite us to construct the story ourselves. The perfection and intensity of Equinox’s capture, the sense and greed for beauty and life that motivated it, the undisguised mystery of the dark zones, the doubt that perspectives instill in reality, so far from freezing our vision, leave the field of our imagination wonderfully open. Intrigued, dazzled, fascinated, all the senses are summoned, and we are delighted.
We could be snuggled up in the evening in the warmth of a theater, the semi-opaque curtain dropped, revealing only a sketch of the set, a contemporary staging of On ne badine pas avec l’amour, and Perdican crossing the proscenium from right to left, saying Trouvez-vous à la Petite Fontaine, what does that mean? So much coldness and a rendezvous above all else? … Why choose such a place? Is it coquetry?
We could have returned to the same theater again and again to see Jean-Claude Gallotta’s dancers irrigate the stage with their playful, sensual gestures. The singularity of each performer’s body, entrances, exits, pas d’ensemble, solos, duets, marches, arabesques…
We could be in the half-light of a Neapolitan church, in front of a painting by Caravaggio and his gallery of street faces popping up in a baroque chiaroscuro.
Hand in visor or sight protected by glasses, solitary or twins, hieratic or unbound, isolated by their earpieces or conquerors, prisoners or not of their dress codes, young or not so young, free or determined, exposing or protecting themselves, seeming to gain momentum or slow down, or all at once, they cross the stage. Will they meet, pass each other, look at each other, ignore each other, run away from each other, turn their backs on each other forever? Do they go round in circles? Will they go back the other way? Are they playing a game?
They go through life, they go through our lives. And the journey never ends.
Isabelle Orloff
“In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp and trudge was what she loved; life.”
Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway
