Joëlle Bouvier and Régis Obadia are a pair of dancers who refer only to themselves, beyond any functional reference. Their dance refers - distantly - to forms of expressionist theatricality. They have been working as a couple since 1980, when they created their first duo, ‘Regard Perdu’, which won first prize at the International Choreography Competition in Nyon (Switzerland). They were then joined by Jean-Marc Poiriez, and together they presented ‘Terre Battue’, which won an award in Bagnolet. Again as a duo they created ‘Noces d'argile’ and as a quartet ‘Tête close’, presented at the Val du Marne Biennial and in the United States (1983).
Their work, they claim, does not depend on any particular technique: ‘Only the awareness of the body and the dimension of the actor are the constant and essential elements of our research. This physical study, closely linked to emotion, uses different elements (energy, weight, temporal and relational space) capable of generating an expressive force'.
