He Sings. He Dances. He Creates a Sense of the Otherworldly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/arts/dance/francois-chaignaud-crossing-the-line.html

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François Chaignaud’s introduction to dance came when he was a child growing up in Rennes, France. At a young age — around 7 — he found himself on the conservatory track, immersed in ballet and contemporary dance. While that approach teaches “strength and discipline and builds a lot of skills in the body,” he said in a phone interview, it’s “blind to the fact that dance can be something else.”

To Mr. Chaignaud, whose works ignore conventions of gender and genre, dance always contains the possibility of being something else. Known for his daring collaborations with Cecilia Bengolea, he is now concentrating on his own choreography, especially pieces that incorporate his voice and body to create a sense of the otherworldly.

Beginning Friday, the day he turns 36, he presents “Dumy Moyi,” or “My Thoughts,” as part of the French Institute Alliance Française’s Crossing the Line Festival. For “Dumy Moyi” (2013), his first solo, he is, in part, resurrecting a childhood desire: “To make a show where I would wear a huge costume and dance and sing at the same time,” he said, with a laugh. “I’m trying to place singing and dancing at the same level.” (Mr. Chaignaud recently started studying with a voice teacher who understands his physical approach.)

His initial inspiration for “Dumy Moyi” was theyyam, dance rituals from the southwestern Indian state of Kerala, whose practitioners wear elaborate costumes. In Mr. Chaignaud’s intimate, 35-minute work, performed at the Invisible Dog Art Center, he dons different costumes — elaborate and purposely overwhelming — as the audience moves alongside him.

While singing and traveling through the performance space, he creates a ritualistic sense of the divine. But you’re never quite sure where you are, and that’s the point: Mr. Chaignaud’s aim is to provide an antidote to Western theater.

“It feels like a journey,” Courtney Geraghty, the institute’s artistic director, said, adding that Mr. Chaignaud embodied the festival’s idea about crossing lines. “He checks all those boxes all the time and reinvents himself through every single piece he does.”

For Mr. Chaignaud, the performance makes for a particularly heightened experience. “The connection between myself, the audience and the art is super direct,” he said. “It’s unbiased.”

Isn’t that what live performance is all about? Recently, Mr. Chaignaud spoke from Strasbourg, France, where he was on tour, about the work’s inspirations, including its vaudeville connection and his imposing wardrobe. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

You discovered theyyam on trips to India. What did you take away from that?

The performers were in huge costumes, performing dances and songs in the middle of the crowd and not on the stage. They not only quote the life of the gods or the divinities, but they actually become those gods.

Making them not be just being actors, but actual gods questioned my own practices. I come from Europe, where dance is mostly something where you create illusions or representations. There is not this possibility of such a belief.

What were your questions?

What is the purpose of making a dance? What kind of effect do we expect?

Do you use any movement from theyyam?

There is absolutely no quotation of theyyam. I’m going to perform at Invisible Dog in an art context. I’m not pretending that I’m in Kerala. I’m not pretending that I suddenly became a god. [Laughs] Another starting point was more contextual. I had a feeling that the best way to practice my art was not through rehearsing, but through performing.

Why?

I wanted to make dance be less of an exceptional event. When I created it in Montpellier, I performed maybe 20 shows in five days. It was to make it more like shows in vaudeville or cabaret, where you would put in a coin and have the show start over again.

What is your approach to singing in this?

I want to connect the organic and physical and incarnated practice of dance to seven or eight pieces in different languages. It goes from a traditional Ukrainian song to Baroque music.

I also only chose songs that use the pronoun “I.” So it’s a person speaking for himself or herself and either putting a spell on the audience or confessing something. I also wanted to explore the spectrum of the voice, which goes from very low to very high.

How does the costume affect you?

I collaborated with Romain Brau, a fashion designer whose costume has an impact on what is possible and not possible with the movement. I was very impressed and influenced by the theyyam artists who succeed in creating dances in costumes so enormous that you wouldn’t think you could move a single finger.

I told Romain that he shouldn’t have any constraints, that he shouldn’t be worried that it would be heavy or prevent me from doing certain moves. I wanted us to go for shapes and a vision using the materials that we wanted even if it would be too heavy.

What are some of the materials in the costumes?

There are natural elements like human hair and fur, and more precious elements like crystals. They really change my silhouette. I like to consider that the costumes somehow did choreograph me, even though it’s not completely true. But a lot of movements have been more anchored by them.

Why is it important that the audience move around with you?

There is an echo of my own gestures in the movement by the audience, because it has to reorganize itself constantly to not be hit by my costume or just to see what’s going on.

Do you have any rules?

We ask people not to lean against the walls because that creates an empty space in the middle. I don’t want to recreate the safety of a traditional stage. And also ask them not to sit on the floor so the piece keeps moving. Usually when there are big costumes, it’s on big stages that you look at from far away.

Did you want to change the way an audience views a dance?

I was feeling frustrated that dancers put out a lot of effort and dedication, but that the relationship audiences had with dancers was very tepid or just not intense because dancers are never super famous.

So it’s true: I wanted the audience to have a more intense relationship to dance. Maybe it’s a bit naïve, but this is a constant transformation of voice, of costumes, of languages, of genres — it’s also why I find it interesting that the people aren’t static. Nothing is static in the piece. It’s very successful when we all travel together.