Samuel Mathieu

In 2001, after working as a performer with Régine Chopinot, Jean-Claude Gallotta, Robert Seyfried or Tuméo Vergés, Samuel Mathieu founded his own company and started working as a choreographer. He was a performer in his own pieces, composed the soundtrack, and created the stage design and the video. In 2004, he created Est-ce-O-Elle-O-solo for himself. Then a series of group pieces, including Us-Band and Go On!, during which he established a bond with his performers.

From 2008 on, his will to share experiences with foreign artists, to travel and to draw inspiration from other cultures led him to Germany first, to the Vorpommern Theatre, where he choreographed Nord-Reich-Nord. An experience that established the writing principles used again the same year in Yan, a Franco-Chinese project carried out in France, and also in Japan in 2009 with Generic-X.

“Writing the choreographic and musical scores should generate not only an intertwinement of disciplines and their processes, but also a decisive encounter aiming at a common object which would shatter The Code and give way to The Body.”

From 2010, Samuel Mathieu put forward to composer Maxime Denuc the idea of reflecting on the link between music and dance. He suggested two of three projects on the topic of the journey of Ulysses: Boutès, and then The Man who Plunges for which he was accompanied on stage by a string quartet, thus materializing the approach. Next came Remarkable identities, an epic piece shared by nine performers, as a reference to the Odyssey, and it became the crowning achievement of the approach.

“A piece in which the dramatic art comes from the bodies. Following through with the movement, in unity, without skirting around it, on the contrary, by sharing it, kneading it, challenging it and exposing it in order to extract from it the essence of universality and physical commitment”.

The writing process around physical commitment led to February 2014, when he created a piece for 8 dancers, R, a creation on the Rondeau, a dance from South West France, which he revisited on that occasion, challenging it in context in order to extract the essence of a necessity.

In parallel to this dance of emphasis, Samuel Mathieu examines the notion of oppression in the countries of Europe and the hold of dictatorships over our territories. He distinguishes three strands : Monsters, Assassins and Attentät(er). This later will concludes the adventure.

The choreographer’s two most recent works now turns towards a confrontation of the genres, involving aerial straps and dance. It was all created in 2015, opening the door to a piece for six performers, a creation inspired by the synopsis written by Yves Klein in 1954 : War (of the line and of color).