Stripped of meaning

While Mats Ek is the featured choreographer of the International Festival's dance retrospective this year, tucked away in strange corners of the Festival Theatre are four performances by a young French choreographer who wasn't even born when Ek began creating dance pieces some 30 years ago.

It might be tempting to be preoccupied by the strange settings - scene dock, side stage, auditorium - or the warnings about nudity, but these are just two elements of the intriguing output of Boris Charmatz. Word plays about charming Charmatz may also be de rigeur, for this is an ebullient and articulate young dance-maker who speaks in fluid paradoxes about the nature of his work.

Expectations should be consigned to the bin at the outset: Charmatz is hoping for an open-minded audience. "Retrospective is an enormous word," he says of a programme which brings four examples of his work to the Festival Theatre over the next 10 days, "but what people have the chance to see is a way of questioning dance."

In a busy career for someone still only in his late 20s, Charmatz followed three years at the Paris Opera Ballet School by working with French choreographers such as Regine Chopinot and Odile Duboc, and has only recently begun to spend more time with his own work rather than dancing for others.

Charmatz is reluctant to see his work as typically French, although he cites a wealth of French influences from the 1980s, or his company's visit to the festival as representing his native land. In common with many smaller French dance groups, most of the company's touring has been abroad, where audiences have clearly appreciated his work without the experience of having seen the works of his mentors and heroes.

Exploring distance seems to be a theme in Charmatz's work - distance between dancers, between the audience and the performers, between expectations and reality. He leaves much unsaid with his work, allowing those who see it to decide for themselves: 'Is he saying something to me? Am I comfortable with the images put before me? What do I come away feeling and thinking?'

Plenty of choreographers assert meanings and motivations for their work, but Charmatz seems able to retain a healthily grounded approach, neither telling stories, demanding responses nor setting out an agenda. He's "just" making dance pieces - but pieces that have already gained him a reputation as a young talent to follow closely.

Speaking about the idea of showing works created when he was just 17 (A Bras Le Corps, with his collaborator, Dimitri Chamblas), Charmatz has no qualms nor any obvious egotism about his precocious talent. "I like the idea that Edinburgh will see a piece which is already eight years old, created by a 17-year-old. We tried something ambitious very young. We didn't want to wait for maturity.

"Some dance companies just forget works as they go along, some are repertoire companies who keep the pieces and change the dancers. What we do is somewhere in between, with dancers getting old, seeing how we react, what questions are around in the works now. Different resonances come from each individual performance."

Charmatz is very definite that his work is not specifically youth- orientated, however. "I don't like to think before for which audience a work could be. As a child, I loved the choreography of Dominic Bagouet, films by Tarkovsky, saw works with naked bodies that maybe I shouldn't have - but these were what I liked. I'm not looking for an audience that is serious or otherwise, young or old - I like to present work without a lot of ideas, not thinking of significance to every movement."

Yet Charmatz has clearly thought at length about what he's saying in his work, and what the audience may anticipate. Contradicting himself, he maintains that the pieces are very simple, yet complex. "The different space used for each work does not mean they are studies about space. This was never the first question. Location is very important, with many questions in each piece, but I'm afraid people will be disappointed if they come to discover a space when this is a part, not the focus, of the works.

"The same with nudity - very important, but again only a part. We're working with nudity in a special way, exploring the tensions between nudity and dance, not exhibitionism or voyeurism."

There's little doubt that the combination of the intimate locales for the works and the abbreviated costumes will provoke reactions, particularly in the peculiar world that is the Edinburgh Festival, where outrage is as vital to the atmosphere as erratic weather and traffic chaos.

What Charmatz does set out to do is to question attitudes about bodies and exposure, the restrictions we put on ourselves in approaching bare flesh. Does a T-shirt or a wig worn with nothing else reduce or accentuate the nudity of the dancer?

Charmatz's own notes to audiences on his works are intense and thoughtful, full of references to utopia, myths and contrasts. Yet he shrugs off the intellectual label, and has a disarming lack of pretension about his work.

"I hope audiences can think - dancers also. As for the motivations for my work, I couldn't say why, for instance, I wanted to dance nude. Not to break any invisible rule. I don't deal with the picture of our bodies but the ideas in our heads, and like to explain how we are working. In a way, it's very intellectual to be a dancer today, as you can hardly live from dance. If you choose dance it really says something about your determination."

While others may pontificate on the collaboration between art and dance, Charmatz is quick to point out that his energetic and emotional choreography is not intended to be seen as part of a fusion with art. "I'm interested in expressing a special answer to the usual questions within the works. Just because I studied art history doesn't mean that my dance has to be inspired by this.

"In Les Disparates, the huge sculpture by Toni Grand, it's not a case of a wedding between the artwork and the dance. It's the opposite of collaboration, with a sculpture that is designed to be seen close up and yet is seen far away on a stage. It's static, I can't do anything with it in the dance, I'm not asking anything from it - and it asks nothing as part of the performance."

In AATT ENEN TIONON, the dancers are separated from one another by tiers of scaffolding, isolating each in his or her own tiny choreographic world.

Once again, the audience is invited to form their own ideas about the meaning and importance, without instruction from the choreographer. Charmatz isn't being evasive, he just wants us to work alongside the dancers in the exploration.

Charmatz's company, EDNA, will appear in four works, all late night at the Festival Theatre. The pieces include a solo performed by Charmatz himself, Les Disparates; A Bras Le Corps, a powerful duet with his earlier collaborator Dimitri Chamblas; and the more recent works by Charmatz alone, AATT ENEN TIONON for three dancers, and Herses (Une Lente Introduction), for five.

In each, expect a powerful, thought-provoking physicality, provocative landscapes surrounding the choreographic language, and an atmosphere of emotional energy enhanced by music and light. Charmatz says his work has no limitations, other than the ones we may choose to put on it to make it more comfortable or understandable.

Take a chance - keep your mind open and watch this young talent open your eyes.

EDNA will be appearing at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, from tomorrow until August 25 (except August 18, 22 and 23) Boris Charmatz trained in France before working with Odile Duboc's company.

In 1992, he began a choreographic collaboration with Dimitri Chamblas, moving on to solo dance creations from 1996. In a short time he has gained a reputation for a powerful, sensual movement style allied to a provocative use of space and bodies

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