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Until April 2nd 2012 – Centre Pompidou Metz
The Centre Pompidou is dedicating a brand new exhibition to the connections between the visual arts and dance, from the 1900′s to today. “Danser sa via” ["Dancing through life"] shows how these sparked off modernity and fed the major movements and the figures who constitute the history of modern and contemporary art. The exhibition illustrates its point through works by artistic figures of the 20th Century, through movements that founded modernity, and through the research of contemporary artists and dancers. It presents the common interest of art and dance for the body in movement. “Danser sa vie” ["Dancing through life"] creates a dialogue between all disciplines, of fine art and choreographic art. A wide range of paintings, sculptures, installations, audio-visual work and choreographic pieces, illustrate their incessant exchanges, in a language that is often fusional.

The title Danser sa vie [Dancing Ones Life] is taken from Isadora Duncan, the pioneer of modern dance: “My Art is just an effort to express the truth of my Being in gesture and movement … Before the public which has thronged my representations I have had no hesitation. I have given them the most secret impulses of my soul. From the first I have only danced my life” (Isadora Duncan, My Life, New York, 1927).

André Derain Danse bachique, 1906 Crayon et aquarelle sur papier The Museum of Modern Art, New York

AN EXHIBITION IN THREE SECTIONS

DANCE AS SELF-EXPRESSION, FROM VASLAV NIJINSKY TO MATTHEW BARNEY
The invention of a new subjectivity is explored through the emergence with Isadora Duncan of a free dance emancipated from classical ballet. In Germany, in the years of Expressionism and of “Freikörperkultur” (Free Body Culture or “naturism”), there was a hitherto unprecedented exchange between artists and dancers, exemplified, for instance, in the relationship between dancer Mary Wigman and the painters Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde. From Matthew Barney and Vaslav Nijinsky to Kelly Nipper and Mary Wigman, contemporary art too has maintained the dialogue with the greats of modern dance.

Auguste Rodin Nijinski, 1912 Bronze Musée Rodin, Paris.

DANCE AND ABSTRACTION, FROM LOÏE FULLER TO NICOLAS SCHÖFFER
Here the birth of abstraction is viewed through the choreographic inventions of Loïe Fuller and the ways in which Kandinsky, the Cubists, the Futurists, the Bauhaus and the Russian avant-gardes made use of dance. Certain figures, such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp, were both dancers and visual artists. Others maintained a dialogue with dancers, as did Kandinsky with Gret Palucca and Calder with Josephine Baker. The explorations of Nicolas Schöffer and Alwin Nikolais then bring this story to a close with mechanical ballets, kinetic inventions and virtual dances. This section also includes a new work
by Olafur Eliasson specially conceived for the exhibition.

Étienne Chambaud La Danse, 2009 Photographic collage: reduplication of an anonymous black and white print of Irma Duncan at Grünwald, c. 1910 Collection M. Étienne Chambaud, Paris

DANCE AS PERFORMANCE, FROM DADA TO JÉRÔME BEL
This last section considers the connections between dance and performance art and vice versa, from the first Dada actions at Cabaret Voltaire to the deployment of tasks (gestures taken from everyday life) by dancer Anna Halprin, from the birth of the happening with Allan Kaprow to Black Mountain College.
In the 1960s, Merce Cunningham engaged an artistic dialogue with John Cage, and indeed with Andy Warhol. A selection of works and documents looks back to the Judson Church in New York and then highlights the influence of popular clubbing and techno culture.

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