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 timeless performer begin to emerge, caught between the ghosts of yesterday and the uncertain promise of tomorrow. A figure unfolds, through solemn and absurd turns, striving to find their place in the world against the backdrop of a conflict that is both diffuse and ever-present, internal and universal.

2/6 – Delphine Hecquet & Clémentine Le Bas (theatre)
Tout entière
Even today, photographer Vivian Maier remains a mystery. Her vast, silent body of work captures fleeting moments on the streets of New York and Chicago, documenting an era of profound political and social change. Yet her images also reveal the quiet stance of a woman who observed humanity with a secret precision. Clémentine Le Bas seeks to merge with Maier’s gaze, to see the world through her eyes. Delphine Hecquet accompanies her on this intimate journey, lending her a voice – to inhabit her, if only for a moment, entirely. But what does an image reveal, if not its own truth?

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.

5/6 – Nina Negri & Dylan Poletti (theatre)
PUPPY-PLAY
“The oppressor does not hear the language of the oppressed as speech, but as noise.”
— Valérie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto

How far can one direct, and be directed? Are there limits? And can they be crossed?
PUPPY-PLAY probes and subverts the power dynamics at the heart of the director/actor relationship.
Dylan Poletti and Nina Negri confront these questions in the wake of the MeToo movement and the surge of testimonies exposing abuse within the performing arts. A kind of theatrical agility course, the piece echoes wider systems of dominance and submission, and places its bet on the rebellious force of the living.

6/6 – Mathilde Morel & Kenza Zourdani (theatre)
Hapax ou La Comparution Immédiate 
Summoned to appear without knowing exactly what she’s accused of, mistaken for someone else, Kenza – like Joseph K. in The Trial – must defend herself against an accusation that is both opaque and overwhelming. And like him, she resists.
Hapax ou La Comparution Immédiate (Hapax or Summary Hearing) is a meeting point between the poetic writing of Mathilde Morel and Kenza Zourdani, confronting two forms of radical powerlessness: that of the average European in the face of the first live-broadcast genocide and that of a theatre striving to find the strength of its own voice.