Associate artist of the Geneva Ballet, Franco-Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet and the Japanese visual artist Kohei Nawa met for the first time around Vessel in order to merge, confront and transcend their respective means of expression. Between mobile sculpture and sculptural performance, Planet [wanderer] reflects Vessel as the second part of a diptych. Starting from the word “planet” and its Greek etymology (休伙丟伕ή件亦ς planētēs “that wanders, that gets lost”) Jalet and Nawa plunge a group of eight dancers into a choreographic reflection which looks and feels like an initiation journey. In this piece, they start with the observation that the world, as a planetary reality, is a body adrift and, conversely, being adrift is the first attribute of all bodies in this universe. 

To better highlight this wandering, Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa imagine a contemporary reinterpretation of the dry gardens of Kyoto as the setting for their exploration. The visual artist city is based in this city and Kyoto is where the two of them have been exploring their common language since 2015. The scenography here is a metaphorical and metamorphic space, where everything seems to interact.  

In the continuity of Vessel, which created another world from the anatomy of the dancers, Planet [wanderer] moves into an intermediate territory, between scientific laboratory and mythological tale. In the Kojiki, the ancient Japanese account of the genesis of the world, the world we inhabit is called Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni, literally “the central land of reeds”. In a strange coincidence with Pascal’s ‘thinking reeds’, the humans in Planet [wanderer] oscillate in a fragile balance between power and vulnerability, harmony and survival, destruction and evolution. 

From the human body as the continuity of a landscape, to the landscape perceived as the continuity of the human body, Planet [wanderer] abstractly explores different phases of connection and disconnection, harmonious and fragile, violent and devastating. Through the confrontation of the human body with various experimental materials, elements and gravity, Planet [wanderer] is a physical and poetic evocation of the migratory nature of life and of the powerful and fragile relationship that connects us to this spheric nomad that is our planet.