Martine Pisani, where she happens to be by David Bernadas
"Going to the essentials. Highlighting quality of presence rather than resorting to artifices of representation. Coming up
with concrete actions onstage. Juxtaposing them. Interrelating them while making sure they stay meaningful… Subtly
and unassumingly, Martine Pisani has affirmed a unique posture and language, matched with genuine poetics of dance.
Following a series of fertile encounters - David Gordon, Yvonne Rainer and Odile Duboc, whom she cites as the most
outstanding -, and participation in the Marseille-based group Dunes, this self-taught dancer in the 80s went on to become
a choreographer in the early 90s by setting up her company. Show after show, she works in ricochets and rebounds.
She often goes digging into a pathway whose potential had been insufficiently explored in a previous step. She is quick
to adopt the postulate that mere thinking is already an action. In addition to being consistent, she bears in mind that
‘play’ is crucial in order to set body and thought into motion. With characteristic detachment, Martine Pisani probes the
space in-between.
She probes the space that is necessary for meaning to remain open. Between being and playing, she is in search of the
right distance. And she demonstrates that knowing how to play sometimes entails taking things seriously."
Martine Pisani lives and works in Paris. In 1992 she starts her own company and creates the pieces:
Fragments tirés du sommeil 1992, U-Nighted duo 1993 in collaboration with Marco Berrettini and Caty Olive, Le grand
combat solo 1993 based on a text by Frédéric Valabrègue, Là où nous sommes quatuor 1995, Le son des choses 1997
a sound performance on Dracula by Bram Stoker in collaboration with Antoine Lengo and ManuelCoursin, L'air d'aller trio
1998, sans trio 2000, Ce que je regarde me regarde duo 2001, Slow down sextuor 2002, Bande à part sextuor 2004, Contre
Bande 2005 solo with a chorus of amateurs, o please tll e me solo 2006 for Lorenzo de Brabandere, Vif du sujet
commissioned by SACD, group 2007 performance for 17 students of the Choreographic research group in Poitiers, Hors
sujet ou le bel ici trio 2007.
As part of RUNNING TIMES, cycle of works on the theme of time, Martine Pisani created the pieces:
Road Along Untitled Moments (R.A.U.M.) solo performance 2007 in Bologna (I),
Blink commissioned by Zagreb Dance Company for 7 performances in Zagreb 2008,
one shared object PROFIT AND LOSS in collaboration with Martin Nachbar in Potsdam 2009,
as far as the eye can hear, trio in open air performance in Lisbon 2010.