Artistic journey

Gaëlle Bourges began classical dancing classes at the age of five, then as an adult moved onto modern jazz, tap dancing, Commedia dell’Arte, clown performances and dramatic art. In 1999 she founded her first working venture known as La Compagnie du K, and presented three works: L’ange et le soleil, La vie de Barbara Haynes (avant sa mort) and Le marin acéphale. At the same time she pursued tertiary studies, earning a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in the performing arts majoring in dance at the University of Paris 8, and founded the Groupe Raoul Batz with three members inventing and presenting a range of performances focusing on corollaries with the invention of one-point perspective, anatomy, the emergence of the “Italian style” theater with a proscenium arch stage, robots, and “cogito ergo sum” as stated by Descartes. Then came L’âne, her first solo, and Strip performed by four artists and presented as part of a Paris “Nuit Blanche” [White Night] program. Je baise les yeux can be seen as a further challenge to the eye following on from Homothétie 949 and also the result of ideas first explored with Strip as a bid to work on the way naked bodies (usually female) are viewed; La belle indifférence is a continuation; En découdre (un rêve grec) offers a solution to the crisis in Greece while paying tribute to Antiquity and shows the futility of gender-based labeling. Le verrou (a figure wrongly attributed to Fragonard) is based on the Fragonard painting “Le Verrou” [The Latch], exploring pre-Revolution times. More works followed: Un beau raté, 59, A mon seul désir (Festival d’Avignon, 2015), Lascaux (premiered at the Festival Inaccoutumés, Ménagerie de Verre, Paris, December 2015) and Conjurer la peur (premiered in March 2017). The work of Gaëlle Bourges shows a clear interest in the history of art, and a critical relationship with performance history.