Interview with Noé Soulier by Susanne Franco

From his memories of taking ballet classes next to his sister at a younger age to being mesmerised by the dance with death between a bull and a bullfighter, and to the first performance of Merce Cunningham dance company that he ever saw, NOÉ SOULIER reflects on the memories that shaped his curiosity towards dance and choreography. Placing himself in the lineage of Western contemporary dance after the non-danse artists, he describes his approach to choreography as a way to create new movement configurations with the body and to organise events in space and time. In this choreographic condition, language is engaged as a tool to produce a specific effect on the dance performer while the connection with memory is rather expressed implicitly. As he explains, he explores suggestive movements that refer to other movements that, in turn, stimulate the spectator to trace and to recall through memory the associations that these movements create. This gap or connection between the fragments of abstraction and narration is covered by the effort to find meaning in every gesture and it becomes a continuous play with (re)inventing memory. INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: [00:00:20] Which are your first memories related to dance? [00:04:28] When did you start defining yourself as a dancer and choreographer? [00:07:06] Do you use any autobiographical material in your work as a choreographer and dancer? [00:10:37] Is there something that you would like to forget about the way you have approached dance until now? [00:14:10] Which methods of dance transmission have you experienced as a dancer? [00:21:51] How would you link your work as a dancer and choreographer to dance history? [00:29:37] Do you have any strategies for activating memory? [00:42:46] How do the words ‘repertoire’ and ‘archive’ resonate with your work? [00:50:31] Do you have a way of building an archive of your work?