the cave

the cave is the story of an encounter, or of a series of encounters: an encounter between a body and an environment - that of the Combarelles cave in the French region of Dordogne. In contact with these walls engraved with human and animal motifs over 13,000 years ago, the choreographer Pol Pi experienced a double movement of decentering and widening; within the bowels that go deep into the earth, he felt a call to decipher and incorporate the existence of these multiple presences - to pass on something of what this place has to teach us.

It is also the encounter with the guide at Combarelles cave Monique Veyret, and her attentiveness in reading these fragile silhouettes, in learning the grammar of the lines laid on the stone by the light of a grease lamp. Here, the back of a lioness, there, the head of a horse, the outline of a stylised female figure - using the reliefs and hollows in the rock. The reading of the signs, and all the connections that are established between them, reveals the variety of becoming, the constant interweaving of living forms. Using self-induced cognitive trance as a creative tool - to enter into resonance with other states, other voices, other uses of his body - Pol Pi has composed a choreography in the manner of a guided tour. This inner journey takes us both within himself and into the recesses of an imaginary place taking shape. The cave seems to whisper «Every being is multiple» as the animal figures reveal themselves, mutate and recompose in his flesh.

Pol Pi invites us on a sensory, sonic and physical journey. His dance gives rise to other forms of existence, other ways of relating to the outside world, and deploys all the metaphors of the cave - secret place, refuge, entrails or womb. An archaeological dig as much as a fertility ritual, the cave fashions singular creatures, resonates voices, brings worlds into being. On the steps of ALEXANDRE and Me too, Galatea, Pol Pi continues his exploration of becomings, with a desire to trouble gender beyond the human and to explore the body’s potential for metamorphosis.

- Gilles Amalvi


A project by and with Pol Pi
in collaboration with
Tamar Shelef : outside eye
Gilles Amalvi : sound creation
Rima Ben Brahim : light design
La Bourette : costumes
Alicia Zaton : visual and material research
Tomas Cali : images
Corine Sombrun/TransScience Research Institute : transmission/accompaniment in self-induced cognitive trance.

Thanks to: Marc Martinez and Monique Veyret (administrator and guide of the Combarelles cave), Diane Blondeau for the sound creation of the 2022 project phase, and Baptiste Chatel for the sound engineering advice

Production: NO DRAMA
Executive production: Latitudes Prod. - Lille
Coproduction :  La Briqueterie - CDCN du Val-de-Marne, Latitudes Contemporaines
Writing residency: Les Grandes Fenêtres, a meeting place for creation, experimentation and interdisciplinary research based at Villa les Roses, Excideuil, Dordogne Périgord Vert.


The first phase of the work was financed by the program ‘Mondes nouveaux’ of French Ministry of Culture, within the framework of France Relance.

Photos © Camille Graule