Ulysse Marion
In this new creation, Dimitri Chamblas delves into the life stories of two dancers, exploring how the practice of art has shaped their lives throughout the years and transformed them into extraordinary beings. After group pieces, this work marks a return to intimacy — to the singular relationship born of countless hours spent together in the studio.
Through long conversations with Marion Barbeau and Ulysse Zangs, childhood memories resurfaced, a time when dance was still just an idea, a dream that would take shape during adolescence. The decision to enter the dance school of the Opéra national de Paris marked a rupture with their family environments and led them to renew both mind and body in different ways. Training in such prestigious institutions is rigorous and instills lifelong working habits. For both Ulysse and Marion, this demanding relationship with dance never excluded a curiosity for other disciplines. He also practices music, while she explores acting. Dance, deeply anchored in their bodies, continues to express itself at a level that moves the audience with admiration and emotion. It quite literally inhabits them – flowing through every muscle, turning even the smallest gesture into a perfectly accomplished trace of their lives. Yet in this project, virtuosity is not an end in itself, but rather a means of opening new fields of sensitivity, in order to rediscover within the chaos and intimacy of buried memories, that which connects them to the audience.
The question of space then arises: leaving the studio to explore amplitude and vastness. An experience in the California desert reminded Dimitri that spaces we perceive as empty are often felt as inhabited by invisible presences, and one becomes aware of being observed in what seems like nothingness. The performance will unfold in bare, expansive spaces, because distance surprisingly brings us closer to intimacy. It tests the performer’s courage in solitude and their familiarity with their own phantoms.
Ulysse Marion gently unveils a unique experience of emotion, an invitation to summon those who are absent so they may accompany two remarkable performers encountering their own mystery, their own story.
