On stage with them, the desire and fear of contact Deeply original and sensitive, Closer, at the contemporary dance festival yesterday night Take off your shoes, let's put on our headphones. We penetrate into the black AÈronef and wander through the labyrinth of a tubular forest, carried by sonorous signals which connect to our brain directly. Ready for the encounter of the 3rd type, we leave the statute of spectator to become actor. Of which universe? And what are we then? Suddenly, on the floor, a dancer, her naked legs in the splitting light. In our ears, pulsations and hissing, rackles and tears, like the sound of her movements. Of a subtle knot-work (or tangle) of her fingers, she undoes the gangue(or matrix) that eats her face. Her pure face got a faint glimpse of. She limps, ramps and staggers. Spasm and suffocation. The other creature, male, approaches and obliterates itself. He looks at her and avoids her. They smell us and sneak away of us. Will they touch? Will they touch us? Can one go further into this brush between people who don't know one another, while we are listening, it seems, to their internal noises? This contact is what we desire and what we fear. Certain people move away, others confront them, they seem to launch a call. Closer contains the history of this impossible point of encounter, of this incommunicability , of this flaw. It is a deeply original manner to talk about the other, the stranger, that which is different, of distance and closeness (or proximity, bringing together). This piece of the Belgian-Norwegian company Deep Blue succeeds in touching and grabbing you, until the oppression of the trance, without excessive means, but with a great intelligence in scenography, choreography, the implication of the audience, the relationship between a tense and lively dance, and our watching which is so close. It conceals one of these timeless and sensitive trips that alone true art can offer. Christian Furling