Clothes-ness
Choreographic film & performance | 2026

An exploration of the intimate relationship between body, garment, movement and space.
Featuring garments by Y’s by Yohji Yamamoto and Candice Tianyu.
Live performance presented at Chaillot, Théâtre national de la Danse · March 2026

Clothes-ness explores the relationship between clothing, the body, movement, and space. It also delves into the intimacy between body and garment: the tactile, emotional, and spatial connection between the body and what wraps or accompanies it.

Beyond its function as a covering, clothing engages in a dialogue with flesh, bodily architecture, and the surrounding void. It no longer follows the silhouette: it precedes it, deconstructs it, or erases it. It becomes an autonomous form, floating or structured, or a formal idea rather than a mere ornament.

By shifting clothing from the register of style to that of corporeal experience or kinetic sculpture, Clothes-ness reveals how our textile envelopes reshape the way we inhabit and traverse space.

What happens when clothing no longer dresses the silhouette, but questions it, skirts around it, or makes it disappear?

What becomes of the body when the cut no longer follows it, but precedes it, dismantles it, or transcends it?

The volume of the garment reconfigures the lines of the body, unsettles spatial references, invests the void, and generates its own dynamics.

How does clothing reveal our relationship to matter, volume, and space?

How is the intimate space between body and garment activated?

What kind of relationship emerges between flesh, fabric, and form?

The body shares a silent intimacy with the garment. It wraps itself in it, brushes against it, hides within it, or collides with it. Clothing can protect, constrain, magnify; it can also chafe, graze, or lightly touch. Between body and fabric, a sensitive space is woven: a breath, a tension, a memory of contact.

Movement, the natural extension of this relationship, reveals what the still gaze cannot capture: the texture of closeness, the resistance of a cut, the elasticity of emptiness, the memory of friction, the breath of a form in tension. Movement doesn’t just follow form: it extends it, tests it, and highlights its invisible strains. Matter becomes legible through movement.

How does clothing become sensation through movement?

How can movement reveal the intimate and sensory dimension of our relationship with textile envelopes?

What forms do they take in motion?

How does clothing alter our way of feeling and inhabiting space?

How does the act of moving inscribe the tactile memory of clothing into the landscape of body and space?

Initially created as a short film, Clothes-ness has also been developed into a live performance format, extending the film's exploration of the body-garment dialogue onto the stage.

This adaptation was presented at the Théâtre National de Chaillot during Chaillot Expérience Mode on March 13 and 14, 2026, for three performances.

The live piece expands on the film's sensory investigation, bringing the intimate tension between fabric, movement and breath into direct physical presence close to the audience.

Live format may be redeveloped for specific projects and collaborations.

FULL FILM

Available for professional viewing upon request contact@contradancecompany.com

FILM CREDITS

Creative Direction, Choreography and Performance | Laëtitia Daché 
Director | Gabriel Popoff 
Director of Photography | Mariano Roz 
Editor | Laëtitia Daché and Alejo Ayala 
Colorist | Guillem Birba 
Music: "Evaporate" by Luke Atencio | Musicbed 
Produced by CONTRA 
Co-produced by Gabriel Popoff and Mariano Roz 
Y's costumes courtesy of Yohji Yamamoto 
Dress courtesy of Candice Tianyu 
Filmed at a temporary venue by FOREST agency | Oxford Properties

PERFORMANCE CREDITS

Conception, Choreography and Performance | Laëtitia Daché 
Music: "Evaporate" by Luke Atencio
Dress courtesy of Candice Tianyu