Take a dilapidated hotel, empty, under construction. Invite moving bodies. Young, muscular dancers. Soft, slender dancers. Germain Louvet, Hugo Marchand, Aurélie Dupont, Marie-Agnès Gillot, Mikael Lafon, Eugenie Drion Barbeau, Anna Cleveland, Lida Fox, Jean Lemerse. The problem with dancers is that they escape all the time. Then have a photographer enter to catch them. You see here how Sylvie Lancrenon used her flash to catch them. This book tells a few days and nights of hunting for grace.
Whenever I see a human jumping in the air, I think of Philippe Halsman’s photographs. This American was asking celebrities to jump and pressed the shutter when they flew. Escaping gravity is the natural dream of man. Sylvie Lancrenon is less directive. She allowed the dancers to express themselves freely in the ruined rooms of the Lotti Hotel, lent by Jean-Louis Costes. Philippe Halsman said that by jumping, the stars unveiled their true face. Is this also valid for dancers, these “control freaks” of their body? Not necessarily. Sometimes you feel strength, control, technique. On other pages, my favorites, we guess fatigue, fragility, letting go. And it’s beautiful as a tank stopped before a Chinese student armed with plastic bags.
One can admire this book for various reasons: me I am obsessed by the clavicles. It is, in my eyes, the most touching bone of the human body. There were some very pretty ones in David Hamilton pictures but we cannot say it anymore. “Dance” is full of exceptional specimens of salt cellars, both male and female. The claviculophiles in my genre will feast on this marvelously vulnerable show, under the sweaty skin. But I want to reassure fanatics of navels or rib cages: there are also some very successful ones.
I recommend browsing through this book while listening to music: Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater or Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK, whatever, as long as it’s not Lambada. Serve yourself a glass of strong alcohol and you will see these pictures come to life. It will be an arm that pulsates, a calf that beats, a breast that is arched, a neck that capsizes, a hair that is ruffled. Beware of Sylvie Lancrenon: she’s a witch! She makes life out of paper. This artist is both Gepetto and Frankenstein. She takes pictures and suddenly, you’re at home, you read his book on your couch, and there are a dozen creatures who escape from the book and go through your living room. In the Middle Ages, we would have burned Sylvie Lancrenon.
The beauty of these images lies in the contradiction between the physical, proud energy of professional dancers and the post-apocalyptic setting that serves as a backdrop. Leafing through this treasure, I think of the extraterrestrials who, in a few days, after the end of the world, will land on our planet. They will wonder what we did to destroy our planet so quickly? And if they find this book, in a cellar that has miraculously survived the radioactive tsunamis, they will say: A $ Ù = – & @ GD)! »=; Ù, which means, in Venusian language:” Certainly, the Terrans have screwed up their environment, so they had to be a pretty stupid species; however, look: they also knew how to be tall and beautiful. ”
Frédéric Beigbeder
