photo by Alain Monot
Bernardo Montet is half Guyanese and half Vietnamese, grew up in Africa and in France. He studied classical dance in Bordeaux, and the American techniques of contemporary dance when he went to Paris.
In 1979, he met Catherine Diverrès and after dancing with various companies, founded with her the Studio DM. Together they created their first duo after a trip to Japan where they met Kazuo Ohno, one of the founders of the buto form. Bernardo Montet continues to nourish his work through his encounters with different individuals.
In 1986, he created with François Verret created another duo, La chute de la maison de carton (The fall of the cardboard house). The following year, he created a solo Pain de singe (Monkey Bread) which evolved from his encounter with the Mexican film director Téo Hernandez, and his movements were driven by the demands and the radicality of this spirit of resistance. Au crépuscule ni pluie ni vent (At dusk, neither rain nor wind) declaims them with a renewed strength.
After having been a co-director of the Centre Chor é graphique national de Rennes with Catherine Diverrès, Bernardo Montet decided to concentrate on his own work with his own group, refining everything that touches the body's consciousness, first reflecting upon the sensation of vitality, the "rage de vivre" (the will to live) in Opuscules (1995). Then with the collaboration of Pierre Guyotat, writer and soloist, in Issé Timossé, he retraced the history of colonialism as it touches our existence.
In 1998, he created Ma Lov' at the Quartz in Brest under the direction of Jacques Blanc. This piece included various Israeli artins, among them the plastician Tamar Getter and the composer Eran Tzur, dealing with the idea of territory and the wars fought over it.
From 2000-2003 he was an associated artist and creator at the Quartz, where he created Dissection d'un homme armé (Dissection of an armed man), where the Africa of today contemplates its ruins as it focuses on an armed body, which the choreogragher dissects right down to the skin, from its loss of individual identity to the anonymous identity of the group. He continued working on the mixing of language with Frédéric Fisbach, with whom he co-created a classical work, Racine's Bérénice in February 2001. Then in February of 2002, Bernardo Montet created from the myth of Othello O.More, in which he revisited all the themes and questions which have been at the heart of his creative process.
In July of 2003, he succeeded Daniel Larrieu as director of the Centre Chor é graphique national de Tours, and continues his reflection on the body and its conditions in his recent creations, Parcours 2C (Vobiscum) in 2004, couédécal é in 2005, les Batraciens s'en vont in 2006 and Batracien, l'après-midi (2007).
