The transition between scaling peaks and dancing in the air, creating breathtaking twists and turns, is a brief one. Fabrice Guillot knows this well, with a background as a climber and a present as a choreographer, set designer, and creator of astonishing aerial performances. It is with his company, Retouramont, based in the outskirts of Paris, that his creations come to life, capable of challenging limits and gravity. It could be no other way: if you are used to seeking out “new routes” on the summits, as a choreographer you cannot help but venture into unexplored territories of contemporary dance. His dance—one might say—is no longer satisfied with theater stages; it seeks its reason for being in open-air spaces, in nature, on the most futuristic buildings, and on historical facades. It is in these places that Guillot, alongside loyal dancer-acrobats, unleashes his art, so infused with vertigo that it seems to embody this thought by Paul Valéry: “Looking at the wall, I see a phrase, a dance, a circle. When I look at the sky, the immense, naked sky, my muscles stretch. So much so that I look at it with my whole body.”
In Vide accordé, a cult work of the French company and one of the boldest in its repertoire, three dancers confront the void, that space that makes entities visible and distinct. “Void granted” or “Tuning in with nothing” could be translations of this performance's title, which takes place twenty-five meters high on a prism-shaped rope structure from which the three performers hang. They play with the void and with the possible distortions that their bodies, gravity, weight, and pushes inflict on the elastic pyramid. Like black birds against the deep blue sky, they give density to the insubstantial, inhabit it, compress it, and stretch it at will. They make the hearts of onlookers throb, forcing them to look up and internalize that vertigo, as well as the eternal, unfulfilled desire to fly.
