Dance of Companionship 2014  I have been developing, dancing and guiding people through the dance of companionship since 2014. It is a guided dance framed by a text, and it also involves writing poems. The text weaves together propositions for dance and narrative fragments about forms of togetherness. It is a practice of being-with: with dance, with oneself, with each other, in attentive and intimate distance. As we focus with ever more detail on the present events, dance – our companion – continuously moves away as that which exceeds the dancer’s own doings. It is a horizon and a companion; a partner that remains unknown, whose unknowability obliges and displaces. This dance has been danced in dance studios, art museums, outdoor spaces. It has been danced by professionals and self-declared amateurs. It is sometimes used and/or used as a class, or an artwork, or a social practice.  At the end of 2020, I was invited to "translate" my work with the students of exerce, the Masters program in Montpellier. I shared the score to the Dance of Companionship with Acauã El Bandide Sereia, Léonce Noah, Maria Giulia Serantoni, Mathilde Rance, Pauline Lavoger and Yu-Hsuan Chiu. This score is said while dancing to a group of people who dance, articulating companions of the dance (elements of the danced experience) and figures of the companionship between dance and dancers. Acauã, Léonce, Maria Giulia, Mathilde, Pauline and Yu-Hsuan have redeployed it through their languages and their imaginations. The gathered companions and figures make up two sets of cards. A notebook presents a selection of our working notes. 
 This experienced convinced me to continue teaching the score and its performance as repertoire.  The Dance of Companionship is part of the collection of dance scores that feed my Togethering project. |