I have imagined this research and creation project around Jooss' work, of which Débords is part of, following the creation of the choreographic video-performance Histoire(s). I carried out parallelly with the realisation of my research and creation project on physical memory, embodied in the performance INCORPORER ce qui reste ici au dans mon cœur (2004-2009), which consisted of a series of four distinct chapters or accompanied solos, created successively over six years, and then gradually brought together to form a whole, growing and developing over time. After the creation of Histoire(s), and in parallel with my work on physical memory, I wanted to continue to question the impact that a mean of expression as ephemeral as dance can have in people's lives. I also wanted to study the message that a choreographic work can contain - in the case of The Green Table, the message of a work with no words. And I also wanted to continue studying the influences of the creative contexts and the themes of the representation of Death, war, post-war and resistance. These different elements brought me to decide to continue my research and documentation project on the memory of spectators - initiated with my work at the start of The Young Man and Death -, this time adding the dancers' memories and immersing myself in The Green Table, which is a work that is also related to war and Death.

Thus, unlike the work developed in Histoire(s), where I had devoted myself to collecting the memories of witnesses to the first performance of The Young Man and Death in 1946, this time I decided to focus on the study of the history of one work, The Green Table, as a whole. My project is motivated by three themes that I mainly wanted to probe: the message, the commitment, and finally the charge, the various charges (physical, emotional, dramatic, social, political) present in Jooss' work. It includes an important work of research and documentation, ranging from diggings in existing archives (with the collection of numerous textual documents and iconographic materials), to the creation of archives that constitute the essential material for my creative work.

The first instalment, An Introduction, premiered in 2010 at the Festival Tanz Im August in Berlin and presented in some twenty countries since its creation, was conceived as a documentary performance in which I take the floor to share with the audience part of my research and documentation work. I tell my research's story, drawing a line between the past (of the work) and the future (of my project). I focus on the pre- and post-performance, i.e. on what leads to the work (the conditions, circumstances and sources of inspiration of the author) and what follows from it (its impact, resonance and traces, both material and immaterial). I share with spectators the numerous archival documents, collected or produced in the course of my research, thanks to which I gradually question the notion of the document and the role of the archive in dance.

In this second instalment, Débords / Reflections on the Green Table, I pursue the work of documentation, research of witnesses and interviews, collecting traces both through the people who had seen it and the dancers who had performed and transmitted it. I do so carried by the subjects that constitute my primary motivation: the topics addressed in Jooss' work; its political message and the political commitment of its author; the question of the charge; the history of the company; the omnipresence of the character of Death, and the study of identification phenomena; but also, different questions related to the evolution and transformation of memory through time; the perception of the work and its various contexts of reception, its transmission and its resonance, beyond the disappearance of its author. For it is also a study of the question of transmission of this seminal piece, through the successive revivals which it underwent, as for confronting the viewpoints of different generations of dancers and spectators over time.

Then, I invite six dancers to echo the testimony I have collected along my travels and in the course of my research, which is the only documentary material present on stage. The three women and three men who share the stage with the people filmed become carriers, passers, bridges and receptacles of these memories, their charges and emotions. They receive them, support them, move them and move around, nearby and within the images, driven by a series of questions, about which this creation unfolds.

Olga de Soto approaches The Green Table through its effects, digs through time, moves on, searches, investigates, scrutinizes, questions. Words, but also bodies and views that question what charge the work carries, and that the dancers still startlingly carry today.