When choreographer Jérôme Bel received a commission for a piece from the legendary ballet of the Parisian Opera in 2004, he didn’t ask the big stars or the whole company to partake, but instead chose to work with a single dancer from the last row. Veronique Doisneau was otherwise used to dancing as one of many in the group, while the stars shone with their lengthy solo features. For Bel’s piece, she suddenly found herself in the spotlight. In the piece, Veronique Doisneau is all alone on the big stage, where she tells of her life as a group dancer, of her hopes, of her dream to one day be allowed to dance a major part herself. She shows what she usually has to do in the group, and dances implied passages from the great soli that haunt her dreams. The piece Veronique Doisneau is typical for Jérôme Bel’s working method, for his way of asking questions and looking behind the scenes.
Born in Montpellier in 1964, Bel initially underwent a classical dance education and studied at the Centre national de la Danse contemporaine in Angers. Soon thereafter he was already being hired by France’s best-known choreographers. But after just a few years, he soon realised that he was not really enthusiastic about the pieces which he was dancing. He began to ask himself what lay at the heart of this dissatisfaction and to analyse what actually took place during the performances. His conclusion: illusions were merely being enacted on stage and the viewers were being dazzled by the virtuosity of the dancers. The pieces were supposed to be successful, to sell. But as Bel saw things, in a world of commodities any art that fails to create an alternative vision to the real world makes a commodity of itself. And that is exactly what art is not supposed to be in his estimation.
Spurred on by this realisation, Jérôme Bel took radical action. He cancelled his current engagement and stopped training on a daily basis, because he no longer saw the sense in possessing a dancer’s body that is tuned for virtuosity. Instead he read voraciously, especially philosophical writings. In 1994, the first piece of his own debuted: Nom donné par l’auteur, in which Bel examined the labour conditions as well as the general conditions for dance productions. He brought conceptual art into the practice of contemporary dance, with performances in which concepts and ideas, and not the mere realisation of a work of art, are in the foreground. In his pieces, for long stretches no dancing takes place on stage – in its place are reflections on the art of dance, as in the solo Veronique Doisneau, which deals directly with labour and production conditions in the ballet world. Or when amateurs present their dreams about dancing in Gala, causing the striving for virtuosity to appear in a different light.
Bel demonstrates how meaning is constructed on stage, and holds a mirror up to art and society in the process. His choreographies are rooted in a host of theoretical considerations. However, the way that Bel puts them into practice lends them the effect of being at the same time simple and direct, often absurdly funny and yet very moving. With these radical lines of inquiry, Bel has not only moved his dancers and his audience. Many of his colleagues have also adopted his notions of conceptual dance and followed his lead in making their own work.