This exploration combines:

• research on the body and movement in an energetic approach, on the notion of intentionally non-voluntary gestures and on Danser brut, new modes of choreographic writing related to work on sound and speech through hypnosis.
• research on creative forms and formats that question the relationship to the site and the audience.
  Each Bain has shades of the location where it appears. Public openings allow experimentation in terms of audience presence and sharing questions and discoveries.

The development of the hypnotic tool also continues beyond the Bains in many fields in the form of accompaniments and transmissions.

The various Bains have enabled the foundations to be laid for a technique that uses the hypnotic tool in an energetic approach to the body and movement. It is based on the activation of the hypnotic trance from a stimulation of the imagination, which is very deeply rooted in the body and oriented towards movement and dance (I make certain connections with Butô and connections with various somatic practices). This activation takes the form of an accompaniment through presence and speech. These accompaniments take the form of open and adapted scenarios. Each person experiences this in a singular way and in a shared presence, activating the body at various levels (consciously and subconsciously) for the upcoming dances. Envisaging these scenarios through the notion of « score » and specifying their components is one of the aspects addressed in the research. Other aspects: The various ways of integrating-incorporating the experiences encountered during these accompaniments and how they can be combined in successive strata. The development of the hypnotic process in dancers results in responsive qualities of body and presence in a fine, amplified sensoriality that fosters the emergence of non-voluntary movement, various forms of resonance, contamination of impulses and affects, between dancers and with the audience members- renamed bathers or divers in these immersive forms. It is a question of observing what favors their deployment, what resonances generate this situation and what is at stake during the various preparatory stages and when the work is put into play in the presence of an audience.

While it is up to each person to naturally and spontaneously be in a hypnotic state,  » engaging in hypnosis  » is always an intentional and relational act. This technique has a history with very diverse manifestations and interpretations, depending on the era and cultural context. This technique was constructed from the observation of specific cases and draws on shamanism, experimental psychology and meditative traditions. Today, the most widespread hypnotic practice stems from the work of the American psychiatrist Milton Erickson who proposed, from the 1950s onwards, a new relational therapeutic approach, centered on a benevolent freedom of choice on the part of the subject, with a strong pedagogical dimension. This pioneering work was able to stimulate, in France, approaches such as that of Léon Chertok and François Roustang, who both agree that hypnosis cannot be reduced to a set of instructions, but that it is an effective tool for modifying undreamt of resources. Far from being an instrument of dispossession of one’s faculties of judgment or to act, this renewed technique offers multiple transformation possibilities. It allows one to create and build, through simple but carefully orchestrated gestures of attention, a highly emancipating relationship with oneself, one’s environment and others. Choreographer Catherine Contour explores this inventive side to develop what she calls  » the hypnotic tool « .