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.

3/6 – Sophia Rodriguez & Emma Perez (dance)
Archéologie d’une danse fantôme

is an intimate excavation of Emma Perez’s body. 

This solo treats the body as an archaeological site:

layered with inherited memories, forgotten rituals and erased presences.

_Ghosting the self_ can be a state of strangely thrilling friction. 

To welcome the absent, the ghosts, to give space to what no longer belongs to our time

is also to question what defines reality today. 

If Emma Perez can become a landscape for ghosts,

I wonder…

might she also make space for yours while she’s on stage?

4/6 – Lola Giouse & Ali Lamaadli (theatre)
Pièce de chambre
It would be a game. There’d be an audience, and an actor. He’d begin with: “Hi there! It’s me, it’s Ali, Ali Lamaadli.” It would feel a bit like a game of Memory – a game to remember, to fight against personal and collective lapses. A game to find, recognise, perhaps even repair oneself again. Winding through the rooms of past and present, Lola Giouse guides Ali Lamaadli towards this Pièce de chambre – a space where memory becomes a playground, a test of skill and a source of emotion. Where remembering the joyful moments of the past brings the present vividly to life.