Xavier Le Roy

Interview with artist and choreographer Xavier Le Roy

For two decades, Xavier Le Roy has stretched the boundaries of choreography. A molecular biologist before turning to dance, his approach is still that of a researcher. His pieces explore the idea of process, the relationships between audience and performers, objects and subjects. Not confining his experimentation to the stage, he has developed choreographies for the specific sites and temporalities of exhibitions. Temporary Title, 2015 invites visitors into a human landscape that is constantly changing.

Serge Laurent – What is the relation between the work of the choreographer and that of the visual artist?
Xavier Le Roy – Both seek to make art. […] There can be all sorts of connections. You’d have to talk of specific examples, and also take account of the fact that certain “choreographic artists” make works that could be visual art while certain “visual artists” conceive their works as choreographies.

SL – Are bodies material for sculpture?
XLR – I prefer not to think of the body like that. I’d say that a person can “perform” a sculpture rather than that the body be used as material. The idea of sculpting with human beings whose actions contribute to making, to becoming a sculpture, has to embrace time and space. The body then is one of the elements, one of the things making up the materials, together with time, space, relationships and dialogues that are inevitably shaped, that is, sculpted, when you work with human actions in the presence of an audience. This is close perhaps to what one understands by choreography: the staging of an artificial situation involving the actions of human beings organising time, space and mutual interaction.

SL – With Temporary Title, 2015, what kind of relationship are you trying to establish with the public?
XLR – The artists perform actions that form and un-form assemblies, producing a landscape that is constantly changing. Visitors can view this landscape, as one might say, as either object or subject of their contemplation; at the same time, they are both inside and outside the situation they are considering. To set these differences to work, the performers approach one or more of the visitors, introduce themselves and ask a question. In those moments the relationship established between the public and the work being done transforms the way visitors look, the mode of exchange, and also the meaning of nakedness. If there is something intimate in this situation, it derives not from the exposure of certain parts of the body, but from engagement in a subtle, silent, everyday sharing that offers an experience of the other.

Serge Laurent

in Code Couleur, n°26, september-december 2016, pp. 12-13