Seconde Nature

Bodies-Landscapes-Lights. A cine-choreographic show. Nature, always/already there, never seen before.

Western man thought he had mastered nature, domesticated it and exploited it to the full. In recent years, so-called “exceptional” phenomena linked to climate change have reminded us that our natural resources, our environment, cannot be continually ransacked without serious consequences. Against a backdrop of climate urgency, soil depletion and collapsing biodiversity, the awareness is emerging that we need to imagine our future with nature, not against it.

This ecological, non-illustrative, poetic dimension has infused into Seconde Nature: what do we know about landscape, how do we look at it, how does it influence our behaviors and moods? What does the landscape reveal about human nature, in a continuous dialogue between the unchanging and the changing? With four resonant dancers, Seconde Nature brings these notions to life, in an energy galvanized by the power of thunder and lightning.

Lighting designer Philippe Gladieux plays a key role in creating a visual universe that interacts with the work of Jacques Perconte, a film director and visual artist who explores the body, landscape and color through digital media, and who has become world-renowned since the success of his 2010 film : Après le feu. His music and images of forests, mountains and oceans, whose texture, grain and compression are reworked to match the dancers' gestures and movements, are much more than the background for Seconde Nature: they are the matrix for a live, physical, powerful and carnal experience.

Premiered in 2020 at Centre des Bords de Marne