Under the skin: what stirs Julien Carlier’s artistic spirit?

It was through hip hop that dancer and choreographer Julien Carlier discovered dance. He has used it to create his own personal world that breaks all the rules. He can be seen in two very different pieces: Golem, a piece with two performers that combines dance and sculpture, and Collapse, a group piece that explores the resilience of bodies faced with collapse.

Julien Carlier named his company Abis because he sees his choreographic work as a journey into the inner depths of the self and of one's feelings. A zoomed-in look inside oneself, as he puts it. “Dance does not need words to explain itself. It is sometimes more precise and sometimes much vaguer, which is why it has a different kind of relationship with reality and with communication.” Collapse, his most recent work, which will be presented in June at Les Tanneurs, explores the fragile boundaries between equilibrium and disequilibrium, construction and collapse. “When I make a show, I never begin with an idea or a concept, but with actual movements, dance material, and with outside elements I like to introduce.”

In Collapse, it is planks and wooden construction materials that the dancers manipulate with their hands and with their bodies as if in a playground the size of the stage. It is a show about the collapse of our societies rooted in the performers' personal feelings. “We are told that the consequences of climate change will be catastrophic and yet, we cannot seem to change the way we live because we are swept along by the inertia of the present, of the city, and of life. What interests me is how this affects ordinary individuals.”

Julien Carlier's career as a choreographer has followed an unusual trajectory. As a timid adolescent who lacked confidence, he found comfort in learning to breakdance. “Seeing those dancers do spectacular things with their bodies and achieve a kind of social status was a total revelation to me. After that, I trained a lot and, very soon, I was thrilled to find myself in a hall with people who shared the same passion. Training is all about studying movements, looking for new techniques, and encouraging one another.”

Today, hip hop is the DNA of his vocabulary, which he has transformed through contact with other forms of dance. But he has never abandoned the fundamentals. An ingrained language based on impact with the ground and on qualities of the body “I like to maintain the authenticity of breakdance and focus on the story that style tells and what can be done with all those techniques and with their qualities, which are so different from classical and contemporary dance.” His company, Abis, includes young dancers from Brussels hip-hop circles, with whom he created the awesome Dress Code, and dancers who have trained in contemporary dance.

For Julien Carlier, creation is not a linear process with an initial plan followed by the writing of the show, and then a premiere. He sees it more as a series of failed attempts and abandoned, revisited, or definitively discarded ideas. That is why he created the Labos, pop-up residencies for testing ideas, meeting people, and experimenting without any obligation to produce results. “I prefer to accept that things will be lost, for the process to be like a snowball that rolls and gets bigger bit by bit, so that, ultimately, the most important things are kept, without worrying too much about what has been lost along the way.”

It was during one of these Labos that he met Mike Sprogis, a 68-year-old Canadian sculptor with whom he created Golem, a show in which one person sculpts clay while the other plays with his own body's flexibility. The malleable material that gives shape to the show blurs the lines between the inanimate and the living, between earth and man.

Before beginning his career as a dancer, Julien Carlier trained as a physiotherapist. Although he only practiced the profession briefly, he has retained the understanding of touch and contact that it requires. “Listening to someone else is not just something you do with your ears, but also with your hands and your sensations.” One of the reasons he makes his shows is to share sensations and emotions with the audience. Faced with the threat of our societies collapsing, and a sense of powerlessness, he shows that we can make a bubble, comfort one another, and build something together, away from it all. There is light even in the abyss.

GOLEM
10 > 12/3 Les Brigittines, www.brigittines.be

COLLAPSE
1 > 4/6, 19.00, Théâtre Les Tanneurs, www.lestanneurs.be