Presented as part of DANSE: A French-American Festival of Performance and Ideas, produced by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S. and Institut français, Paris.

Five dancers will stride along the streets of Long Island City, forcing themselves to follow the itinerary laid out by the graph standard of Topologie. Over the course of 10 days, they will elaborate a physical score that they accomplish and reproduce in a precise manner. The score is composed of the daily gestures and natural attitudes that they produce, in the same way that a choreography organizes a planned sequence of movements. The graph is divided into 5 different itineraries, each dancer is in charge of one itinerary. The intersections of the graph result in encounters at certain moments among various dancers. The presence of the performers in the public space is anonymous. They wear no costumes or distinctive signs, their gestures and actions remain ordinary, in no way spectacular. Only the systematic and methodic repetition of the same actions in the same places everyday for 10 days reveals their presence. The qualities of the territory involved – environmental, social, urban – are the material of the piece. The performers transcribe the customs of public space in a given territory in order to construct their physical score. They pay attention to the context proposed by their itinerary, they analyze the identity, characteristics and construction of the territories. They also question the physical and societal obstacles that they encounter and the way in which to anticipate and avoid them. Topologie is part of an artistic movement where the public space is a place available in which one may question the status of artists, the responsibility of citizens and the nature of the customs that consolidate society.

Created by Annie Vigier and Franck Apertet. Sound by Nicolas Martz. Performed by John Hoobyar, Inky Lee, Abigail Levine, Rebecca Patek and Kristopher Pourzal.

“To Please, to Perplex and to Be Barely Noticed on a Dash Through Queens”  – Brian Seibert, New York Times