Invited to make a piece for the ballet of the Paris Opera by her director Brigitte Lefèvre, Jérôme Bel wanted to stage a kind of theatrical documentary on the work of one of the dancers of the ballet: Véronique Doisneau.
The dancer, closed to the retirement age, alone on stage, retrospectively and subjectively considers her own career as ballerina inside this institution.
Véronique Doisneau and Pichet Klunchun and myself by Jérôme Bel, present the reflexive approach of the artist, dancer and choreographer, stripping bare the tenants of performance to expose and reflect on its constructs. His work can be seen as challenging the Aristotelian notion of direct speech, the moment when the performer (in the broad sense of the term) addresses the audience and the other, in order to force a distinction between a predetermined script that is being followed and an undefined space that allows for the self-determination of the actor/individual. The resulting distinction – and its subsequent blurring – draws into question the act of performance itself in the public and relational sphere, and the impossibility of differentiating the staged from an authentic site of being.
With extracts of ballets from: Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot (Giselle), Merce Cunningham (Points in Space), Mats Ek (Giselle), Rudolf Noureev (La Bayadère – Marius Petipa / Le Lac des cygnes – Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov)
Veronique Doisneau is a «sujet» in the corps de ballet of the Paris National Opera.
She began her studies of classical dance in 1971 at the Conservatoire National d'Orléans. In 1979 she joined the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.
She was hired in the corps de ballet of the Paris National Opera as a in 1981.
She became a «coryphée» in 1983, then a «sujet» in 1987.
She danced, in soloist roles or as an «étoile», in all the important creations and reprises of classical pieces of the corps de ballet of the Paris National Opera, as well as in the main creations of the Paris Opera in those years (Twyla Tharp, Maguy Marin, Merce Cunningham).
She has now been retired from the corps de ballet since the end of 2005 and she teaches at the School of the Paris National Opera.