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

5/6 – Nina Negri & Dylan Poletti (theatre)
PUPPY-PLAY
PUPPY-PLAY is an agility performance in which Dylan Poletti is willing to do anything to embody the desire of his director, Nina Negri, even if it means becoming her dog. For the love of the game, how far can we direct and allow ourselves to be directed? How far can we consent? Are there limits, perhaps slippery ones? And can we go beyond them, or even overturn them?
Together, Dylan and Nina explore different temporalities of violence, playing with and thwarting the mechanisms of power and domination inherent in the director/actor relationship in the era of #MeToo and the flood of testimonies of abuse in the performing arts.

6/6 – Mathilde Morel & Kenza Zourdani (theatre)
Hapax ou La Comparution Immédiate 
An immediate appearance: a summary criminal procedure invented in France to imprison vagrants. Used to punish people in a single day without going through the courts. Pressure to present identity papers that one does not have on one's person, a fixed address, a clearly traceable history. Pressure to plead guilty and, above all, to feel guilty.
Today, the judge remains silent. She does not mention the charges. This turns the defendant against herself, forcing her to examine her ‘conscience’. ‘All I have left are words, so I chew them over, rub them together, scatter them. They are nothing more than old prunes that I have drained of their juice, sorry. I do what I can.’

Hapax: a word that is only uttered on one occasion, on a single occasion, and whose definition is therefore not always known.