Catherine Baÿ lives and works in Paris.
After studying theater (École Jacques Lecoq, Philippe Gaulier, Antoine Vitez), ethnology (Jean Rouch) and dance (Marcia Barcello, Philippe Decouflé, Milly Nichols), Catherine Baÿ spent about 10 years developing her work as a choreographer and director. Her work has led her to experiment in different forms (choreography, performing, directing, video, cabaret), and to collaborate with artists from various disciplines.
From 1987 to 1994, Ms Baÿ orchestrated performances and events in different types of spaces, such as swimming pools, nightclubs, vacant lots, and in the galleries of Yvon Lambert and Anne de Villepoix.
She collaborated with plastic artists (Combas, Jean-Charles Blais, Sylvia Bossu),
architects (Laurence Bourgeois, Pascale Lecoq), and dancers/actors (Alain Rigout, Amy Garmon et Laurence Levasseur), among others.
Since 1994, she has been developing a body of work specific to the codes of representation. In Relief ou le discours sur l’éloquence, she dissects the distances between the intimate versus social body while observing political men’s postures during the 1995 French president’ elections. Ainsi parlait Eliane et Lulu, developed with Marco Berrettini and Kolatch, plays on the confrontation of unique bodies on stage. In 1999, she choreographed Nains mode d’emploi, a show that takes place in a display window, in which Ms. Baÿ elaborates on a complex stage device that establishes a dialog between a video screen and the actors, exacerbates the clown motif, and concentrates on the satirical approach of the world of choreography.
Ms. Baÿ’s reflections on the elaboration of events call for new representation and production modes. With this in mind, she opened, with Gilles and Roël Stassart, Window in 1999, a pro ... |