So what if science is taken out of the borders of a laboratory, institution, techniques and all the other academic activities and associations? Then one starts settling down in other areas by learning new techniques. Sometimes the one engages memories and experiences of the previous life in creating new material…
In “Product of Circumstances” (1999), choreographer Xavier Le Roy (Montpellier), shows how a Ph.D. in molecular biology like himself became an artist. In his autobiographical lecture-performance, he combines fragments of dance with an academic lecture format. Le Roy’s work reflects both worlds: his dance performance focuses as much on the body as did his dissertation about cancer cells, investigating the mechanisms and hierarchies he is subject to as a “product of his circumstances” in both the academic and artistic communities.
“”” I began to take two dance classes a week at the same time that I started to work on my thesis for my Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology. It’s been now eight years that I have submitted my thesis and stopped to work as a biologist. Since I work as a dancer or choreograph I am very often presented as an atypical dancer or as a dancer molecular biologist. It became my currency in the ” Society of the Spectacle”. I was invited to prepare and present a lecture for an event on theory and praxis in performance
(” Body currency” Wiener Festwochen June ‘98)…”
Sometimes the one abandons the previous path and creates a completely different new one. The only thing that brings these two together is the frame of the same person, of the solitary lifetime.
One can always draw ties between the events of his life. The danger arises when they are too far-fetched.