A Very Eye (2022) - Tumbleweed

Inseparable from its own kind, as well as from the constantly changing environment, the individual is plural and always in a process of becoming. (S)he is as much a space in motion, as the distance to the other. The human being is a relation.

Inspired by the diversity of collective behaviors found in the living world, A Very Eye is an invitation to change our perspective, to highlighten the interstices, to emphasize the relation to the other and to let the interdependencies appear. Driven by a common stream that seems inexhaustible, six dancers are drifting in and out of each other, letting their bodies merge, despite and because of their divergences. While linked by their gaze and rhythm, they let a multiple face emerge, like an image printed on a passing screen; a DNA in constant transformation.

After The Gyre (2018), A Very Eye is Tumbleweed’s second piece. It premiered from October 4 till 8, 2022 in Les Brigittines, in the frame of the focus ICI Bruxelles.

A Very Eye was awarded Best dance production of 2023 at Les Prix Maeterlinck de la Critique!

In 2023, Tumbleweed created the trio Dehors est blanc. In October 2025, they will create Threshold.

UPCOMING TOUR DATES

We are working on options in 2026. Contact us to know more.

PREVIOUS DATES

  • 04.10.2022 | Les Brigittines, Bruxelles (BE) - Première

  • 05.10.2022 | Les Brigittines, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 06.10.2022 | Les Brigittines, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 07.10.2022 | Les Brigittines, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 08.10.2022 | Les Brigittines, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 15.10.2022 | MaZ | Cultuurcentrum Brugge, Brugge (BE)

  • 06.06.2023 | Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Le Pavillon, Paris (FR) - Première en France

  • 07.06.2023 | Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Le Pavillon, Paris (FR)

  • 15.06.2024 | (extract), Danse Elargie 2024, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris (FR)

  • 16.06.2024 | (extract), Danse Elargie 2024, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris (FR)

  • 20.06.2024 | (in situ), Festival Buffalo, MACRO, Roma (IT) - Première in Italy

  • 29.09.2024 | Centre chorégraphique national de Tours, Tours (FR)

  • 05.10.2024 | (in situ), Le 140, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 12.10.2024 | Hebelhalle, Unterwegstheater, Heidelberg (DE) - Première in Germany

  • 13.10.2024 | Hebelhalle, Unterwegstheater, Heidelberg (DE)

  • 08.01.2025 | Les Chorégraphiques, Oriental-Vevey, Vevey (CH) - Première in Switzerland

  • 09.01.2025 | Les Chorégraphiques, Oriental-Vevey, Vevey (CH)

  • 10.01.2025 | Les Chorégraphiques, Oriental-Vevey, Vevey (CH)

  • 11.01.2025 | Les Chorégraphiques, Oriental-Vevey, Vevey (CH)

  • 12.01.2025 | Les Chorégraphiques, Oriental-Vevey, Vevey (CH)

  • 22.08.2025 | BMotion, OperaEstate Festival Veneto, Bassano del Grappa (IT)

 

A Very Eye - a project by Tumbleweed (60’, 2022)

Concept and choreography: Angela Rabaglio, Micaël Florentz
Creation and performance: Mona Felah, Charlie Prince, (Sergi Parés), Jeanne Colin, Angela Rabaglio, Micaël Florentz, Christine Daigle
Light and set-up design: Arnaud Gerniers
Sound design: Anne Lepère
External eye: Mélissa Rondeau, Esse Vanderbruggen, Christine Daigle
Costumes: Mélanie Duchanoy
Research: TingAn Ying (choreography), Olivier Hespel (dramaturgy)
Administration: Camille Collard
Communication and distribution: Quentin Legrand (Rue Branly)
Production: Tumbleweed
Coproduction: Charleroi danse, Les Brigittines, Cultuurcentrum Brugge (BE), Dansateliers Rotterdam (NL), CCN2 - Centre Chorégraphique National de Grenoble, POLE-SUD - CDCN Strasbourg, Centre Chorégraphique National de Tours (FR)
Residencies / Supports: Les Brigittines, Grand Studio, Cultuurcentrum Brugge, Summerstudios Parts, Garage29, Kanal - Centre Pompidou, de Warande (BE), Dansateliers Rotterdam (NL), Le Gymnase - Roubaix, CCN2 - CCN de Grenoble, POLE-SUD - CDCN Strasbourg, CCN de Tours, Les SUBS (FR), Tanzhaus Zurich, L’Abri Genève (CH), TROIS C-L (LU), Choreographic Center Heidelberg (DE), Materiais Diversos, Estúdios Victor Córdon (PT), Onassis Stegi (GR)
With the support of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles - Service de la danse, WBTD, SACD, Grand Studio and Réseau Grand Luxe 2021/2022

Photos : Danilo Floreani, Stanislav Dobak

PRESS EXTRACTS

A Very Eye is part of the choreographic research developed by Angela Rabaglio (CH) and Micaël Florentz (FR) around forms of collective organization and perceptual processes that emerge from the relationship between bodies, spaces, and gazes. The work is based on a conception of the individual as a plural entity, in constant transformation, intrinsically linked to the environment and to others, which inspires a dance where there is no centrality of the subject, but a continuous redefinition of shared trajectories. The dancers and the audience occupy the same space, a white floor that becomes a terrain of negotiation, traversed by intertwined movements and a network of proximities and distances, which are repeated in an insistent and hypnotic manner. Almost dangerous, one might say, given the speed at which the performers interlock with each other in these repeated signs, reminiscent of old quadrilles, but set up in a criss-crossing back and forth, so that a single mistake would send everyone rolling on the floor. But the catastrophic misstep does not happen. And it doesn't happen for nearly an hour, despite the fatigue, the insistence, the difficulty of individual and collective coordination. I loved it, as did most of the audience. Someone said with a laugh, “Sciarroni has spoiled us!” But the choreography, almost like a genetic blueprint in constant reconstruction, has a complex and varied creative structure that is very pleasing, sometimes reminiscent of Botticelli's Three Graces, thanks in particular to the refined and discreet lighting design by Arnaud Gerniers.
Renzo Francabandera, paneacquaculture.net, 28.08.25

Tumbleweed bases its piece "A Very Eye" on a contrasting approach: a meticulous and skillfully constructed study of group formation through a common movement. (…) From the dancers and the audience walking together, a fluid performance unfolds with a relaxed naturalness, which gradually reveals a meticulous choreographic score. (…) The way the group forms, aligns its movements, changes the rules of the game, initiates and varies movements gently, negotiates proximity and distance without contact, and increasingly synchronizes movements while still allowing space for individuals—it is both seamless and very exciting to observe. The gentle shifts, small turns, slight wriggles around each other, and brief, soft touches are essentially everyday movement materials, making the choreographic elements all the more spectacular.
Isabelle von Neumann-Cosel, tanznetz.de, 15.10.24

A Very Eye begins in the most beautiful way possible: with an absence, with a withdrawal, which reveals a presence, producing an unexpected ballet. (...)
By its strange luminosity, like the last fires of a world inducing the intuition of an irreparable loss, by its deceptive repetition as fascinating as it is hypnotic, by its varied speeds accommodating the differences of luminous states, A Very Eye projects us into a sensitive and rare experience of seeing: how in certain optical conditions, fleeting movements can show persistence, how the retinal persistence of images can generate sorts of residual traces in vision like so many blows of overlapping brushes creating these crossfades. The dance here embroiders its tapestry in a prodigious and subtle deployment of moiré effects. And we are overwhelmed with a rare emotion in front of a living, sumptuous work of eternal youth, summoning both the primitive beauty of a dance painted by Botticelli and the modern splendor of video artist Bill Viola.
Nicolas Thevenot, Un fauteuil pour l'orchestre, 19.06.23

In The Gyre, the same pattern of footsteps made the duo move around a central axis from which they never deviated. We find in A Very Eye this principle but extended to the six performers. From a common pattern of movement, such as electrons or elementary particles rotating and crossing around an invisible nucleus, they brush against each other or dodge each other, hold or touch each other in multiple variations. They do not take their eyes off each other, absorbed by the same perpetual movement regulated by the line. The choreographic composition is like a decorative motif living to the rhythm of contraction and expansion driven by the performers. The spaces between the bodies are as important as the design of the composition. It is between these interstitial spaces that the drawing of the motif can be traced. Minimal, geometric and organic, A Very Eye reveals all the sensuality of the body in a totally hypnotic immersive choreography.
Filip Forestier, avoiretadanser.fr, 08.06.23

Wishing to experiment and make sensitive the forces and the collective negotiations that take place in a group in perpetual motion, Angela Rabaglio and Micaël Florentz imagine a shared space where the movements of the dancers and the spectators intertwine, influence each other and coordinate intuitively within a continuous movement of interdependence. In this interview, Angela Rabaglio and Micaël Florentz share their research and present the creative process of A Very Eye.
Interview by Wilson Le Personnic, maculture.fr, 04.06.23

A Very Eye, bath in beauty (…) Both abstract and organic, geometric and wildly fluid, the piece explores the material that moves and offers itself to as many readings as there are people present to experience its metamorphoses, its synchronicities, its logics, its intersecting patterns.
"How do we negotiate to be together, how do we remain ourselves by forming a whole, but without blending into it": these exploratory questions, worked on by six, give rise to multiple interpretations ranging from atomic physics to Arab-Andalusian architecture, from weaving to the dynamics of shoals of fish, from folklore dances to listening to trajectories.
With always in mind this eye evoking the cyclone as much as the look and its tenderness. And this unspeakable, essential magic: living together an intimate and unique moment.
Marie Baudet, La Libre Belgique, 06.10.22