Why mess with a winning formula? Back in 2001, La Bâtie gave eight performers the freedom to choose a choreographer to create a solo for them: a radical role reversal that put the performer at the heart of creation. The experiment, revived in 2018, once again stood out for its daring spirit and freshness. Now, for this 49^th edition, as Claude Ratzé signs off on his final season as artistic director, the festival brings the format back with SIX/SIX. Six emerging performers – two from dance, four from theatre – select their creative partners (choreographers, directors, artists) to craft a solo. These creative blind dates breathe new life into stage writing and return the spotlight to the performer as the driving force of creation, celebrating transmission, trust and the vibrant energy of a new generation.

1/6 – Thibault Lac & Collin Cabanis (dance)
Fanfaron
From the edge of a jetty, Collin Cabanis invites us to gaze out over a turbulent horizon, one shaped by the vision of Thibault Lac. Through the scattered remnants of a tender memory, the melancholies of a
Through his sensitive memory, Collin Cabanis sketches with Thibault Lac the reveries of a timeless street performer. Between the ghosts of yesterday and the uncertainties of tomorrow, this archetypal figure of entertainment amuses himself with his own fantasies as much as with ours. He plays at putting on a show, summoning familiar fragments of acrobat, tightrope walker or sailor to the stage.
Facing the architecture of the pier – a sculptural pontoon that becomes in turn a springboard, a stage or a monument base – stands a solitary, exposed silhouette, at times evoking the passion and mythological wanderings of Genet's Querelle or Fassbinder. Forgotten dances resurface and revive the memory of sailors of yesteryear, who joined theatre technical teams to handle ropes, sets and stage props.
This choreographic piece is conceived as a short poem, like the lines of a Cocteau drawing or an allegory flirting with kitsch that could charm us. To the ambivalent sound of festive yet military fanfares, Fanfaron attempts to inhabit the present and unfolds in its disconcerting absurdity: deeply melancholic and grotesque. It invites us to contemplate together a blurred horizon, marked by hope and doubt.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? 
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see 
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go
Little high, little low 
Any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me 

Mama, just killed a man 
Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I've gone and thrown it all away
Mama, ooh, didn't mean to make you cry
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow 
Carry on, carry on


2/6 – Delphine Hecquet & Clémentine Le Bas (theatre)
After the silence [conversation with Vivian Maier]
Adaptation of Tout entière by Guillaume Poix
Solo performed by Clémentine Le Bas - directed by Delphine Hecquet
Even today, photographer Vivian Maier (1926–2009) remains an enigma. She worked for 40 years as a nanny and produced more than 140,000 photographs, which were only developed after her death. Her immense body of work captures stolen moments on the streets of New York and Chicago and documents a time of political and social change. It also reveals the stance of a woman who depicts humanity with clandestine precision.
What are we looking for behind a work of art?
How can we question an artist if not through her actions?
After the Silence invites us to witness the last half hour of a theatre rehearsal where Claire, a young actress, hopes to give Vivian Maier a voice, to construct a fiction with her and to capture what happens after the silence.