Texts and interviews around the work of dancer and choreographer Xavier Le Roy.
What did “Retrospective” by Xavier Le Roy do to and for choreography,
the medium of exhibition, contemporary art, the spectatorial gaze, social
and public space...?
This book opens up a series of conversations, guided interviews, scorelike
reports, and essays about this work. Sundry voices of artists,
dramaturges, performers, curators, critics, art historians, philosophers,
and others reflect on the scope and variety of questions and positions
triggered within and through “Retrospective”.
Published on the occasion of the exponymous exhibition at Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Musée de la Danse, Rennes, Teatro Castro Alves, Salvador, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Centre Pompidou, Paris, TheatreWorks, Singapore, and MoMA, New York, from 2012 to 2014.
Xavier Le Roy holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Montpellier, France, and has worked as a
dancer and choreographer since 1991. He has performed with diverse companies and choreographers. From 1996 to 2003, he was artist-in-residence at the Podewil in Berlin. In 2007-2008 he was "Associated Artist" at Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, France. In 2010 Le Roy is an Artist in Residence fellow at the MIT Program in Art Culture and Technology (Cambridge, MA). Through his solo works such as "Self Unfinished" (1998) and "Product of Circumstances" (1999), he has opened new perspectives in the field of choreographic art.
His latest works such as the solo "Le Sacre du Printemps" (2007), the group piece "low pieces" (2011), and works for exhibition spaces such as "production" (2011) created together with Mårten Spångberg, "untitled" (2012) for the exhibition 12 Rooms and "Retrospective" first realized in 2012 at the Tapiès Foundation-Barcelona, produce situations that explore the relationships between spectators/visitors/performers and the production of subjectivities.
