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BEATRICE MASSIN is a French contemporary choreographer whose work stems from material based on the French Baroque dances of the 17th and 18th centuries.
In her conversation with Dance Historian MARINA NORDERA, they unfold their discussion around four main axes in relation to Massin’s work: personal memories, the transmission of dance knowledge, the relation between history and memory and the body-as-archive. In the early days of her dance training, Massin was exposed to a dance education in ballet and contemporary dance respectful of the individual personality of the dancer and she remains passionate about a kind of training that prompts the dancer to "unlearn", thus to forget, an established technique in favour of individuality and active intersubjectivity in performance.
Her work manifests a strong music-space relationship which acts as a key element in the transmission and actualisation of historical dances inside a collaborative context of mutual trust between choreographer and dancer(s) in the performative process.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

PERSONAL MEMORIES
[00:00:19] What is your first dance memory?
[00:02:23] What is your first memory of a dancer who inspired you?
[00:03:55] When did you begin to define yourself as a dancer?
[00:04:40] Which are the experiences of your dance education that stay in your memory?
[00:06:35] What have you decided to forget about your training as a dancer?
[00:08:40] Can you specify the processes of unlearning in relation to memory?
[00:09:33] Do you have any mnemotechnics for remembering what you have forgotten?
[00:10:04] Is there any room for nostalgia for the period of your training?
[00:11:55] Are there any autobiographical elements in your choreographic work?
[00:13:11] Can you go back to “Que ma joie demeure” and its connection to autobiography?

TRANSMISSION
[00:15:31] What forms of transmission have you come across during your career?
[00:17:53] How has your way of transmitting choreography changed over time?
[00:24:25] How do you build collaboration and trust in the creative process?
[00:27:45] How do you build community within your dance company?
[00:28:52] Do you recognize the thread of your transmission in the work of the dancers who have worked with you and are now choreographers themselves?
[00:30:21] Are you a transmitter of what you learned from Francine Lancelot to the dancers you have worked with?

RELATION BETWEEN HISTORY & MEMORY
[00:33:52] How does your work integrate dance history?
[00:36:27] Do you look at the sources of baroque dance today like you did 40 years ago?
[00:39:12] Have you taken distance from the Beauchamp-Feuillet notation?
[00:40:40] What is the tool for retrieving memory in choreography?
[00:42:45] Has your way of choreographing changed through time from composing steps to devising a structure?
[00:43:46] You said that the performer's memory is linked to the emotion of space. Could you say more about this idea?

BODY-AS-ARCHIVE
[00:45:49] What kind of knowledge do you keep in your body?
[00:49:13] Is it only kinesiology that transformed you?
[00:51:08] Is your body an archive of techniques?
[00:52:06] Do you have any archive of your work?
[00:53:58] Do you have any audiovisual material of your work?
[00:55:30] Have you developed a notation system for documenting your work?
[00:57:36] What is the notion of repertoire for you?
[00:59:36] Do you like redoing your pieces several years later with new collaborators?
[01:00:09] How do you re-work on a role?