Commissioned by Radio France for the dance company Nathalie Pernette, dedicatee.

Creation on January 15, 2011 at the CENTQUATRE in Paris during the weekend "Well let's dance now!" under the direction of the composer.

Duration: approx. 8'.

This musical commission from Radio France, involving the intervention of the public, was designed to be the finale of the dance show by the Nathalie Pernette company entitled "how to listen to music with your feet...". This educational show was built with games and different movements of the public and the 3 dancers on stage.

Musical gestures naturally find their source in dance. For example, "the shadow game" consists for each dancer in choosing a partner among the spectators and bringing him up on stage. Each one follows one another via a sudden reversal, in a very slow gesture with brief accelerations.

This example of a game is like the work of Nathalie Pernette, whose multiple sources of inspiration refer to insects, a mood, an interaction between people, a part of the body leading to the rest, etc. The result gives a lively, jerky dance, changing abruptly (accelerations, decelerations), of great energy and vivacity, characterized by a crumbling, instability, an exacerbation of gestures and feelings. Gestures often thwarted do not arrive where they should, that is to say where we expect them, so much the succession of events is moving and fluid.

My conception of the musical form, which I call "open form", joins on many points this conception of the dance. My music is self-generating in a continuous movement of endlessly intersecting spirals. Gradually, often, each of the motifs is enriched with characteristics borrowed from other motifs in a sort of progressive abolition of time. This music comes from a nervous state of extreme mobility and instability: these are "shadow games" where what is clear one moment will be in the shadows the next. Dazzling "arpeggios", followed by resonances, translate the unexpected accelerations and upsurges. A very precise instrumentation work contributes to the elaboration of the form, as if each instrument colored the other in a sort of lining, an offset shadow. Thus, the cimbalom doubles the piano and reciprocally, the 2 violins respond or oppose each other. Only the bass clarinet, more soloist, seems to emerge.

Beyond the explosion of details, something stable and slower in depth supports the whole. If the dance in action were the metaphor of life, then stepping back would mean listening globally and not in detail. We can see a certain philosophy of existence there.