overview

Petite Pièce d'Extérieur was premiered in 1995 by the Monte-Carlo Ballet and then performed by Ballet Philippines, and the Ballet of the National Superior Conservatory of Music and Dance in Lyon. Like Volubilis (1997) and Serendipity (1994), this work is the second in a series of pieces danced to the Bach concerti for harpsichord and strings.
Petite Pièce d'Extérieur is a research into composition. Though in a very light mood, the work questions the body in movement, its relation to music and space, from where emerges a certain sensuality within a strong yet free technique.

press

La Tribune, Le Progrès

Originaly created for the Monte-Carlo Ballets in July 1995, this last work strikes us with its weightlessness, its freshness, and the pertinence of the movements. "The harmonies of the bodies for the coherence of the whole" ; a sequence that brings to life the ephemerous and solves itself in a shadow.
Nine young dancers move in the fluidity of the evening air, light as soap bubbles... A superb performance but words cannot translate the beauty of movement.
M.R., 14th April 2000

Danse Conservatoire

Here is an original creation, passionating, that brings out something new, never seen before in dance. Thanks to Lionel Hoche.
It is known to be practicaly impossible to dance to the harpsichord. The exercise is tough. Many have failed at it, and broke the magic string of this music.
Lionel Hoche, challanges it all. With a new vocabulary, made out of brief nonchalant steps, feet turned in, broken arms, he takes us far away, in his reveries, close to the Paradise of Dante.
Colours, decors are there, funny, ludicrous, bizar. Moving austruch feathers,pointless poetic machines. The dancers move among all this with a calm close to irony.
(...)
Like a fresquist, with genious, and with a few moves of his brush, he manages to built these small pieces of an astonishing grandeur.
I do not dare say the names of Watteau and Marivaux to not take the work of Hoche into the past, but through art transposition, I find the same intellectual and aesthetical interest to contemplate these marvellous machineries of this painter, inventor, choreographer and explorer of the human heart, Lionel Hoche. We are waiting with anticipation for the next series of « Petite Pièces. »
Michel Odin, September 1995

extracts/photos

cast

Choreography/Set : Lionel Hoche
Musiques by J.S. Bach : extracts of Partitas BWV 826 in Ut minor, BWV 829 in Sol major, and tne concerto for two harpsichords BWV 1062 in Ut minor
Light : Rémi Nicolas - Costums : Sylvie Skinazi