Danse encore

Description

Dance again: it is a refusal of stillness and breathlessness. The title of Clarika's ninth album conveys a gesture of stubbornness, a desire, the wish to remain in motion. To dance again, even if the ground trembles. Unrestrained, to dance above general anxiety and petty troubles. To dance with familiar figures, and new ones. To make our loved ones waltz and to recognize the poetry in them, even simple, even unnoticed. To dance again is also, for the singer, not to curl up in the comfortable seat that thirty years of career offer. It is to continue, yes, but to mark a break: for this album and for the first time, Clarika wrote and composed. This is new, and had never been a necessity for her. Until now, she had preferred to surround herself with trusted composers (Jean-Jacques Nyssen, Fred Pallem...), from whom she had drawn proud collaborations. It came almost without warning: from a trial came the desire, then the frenzy, the excitement, the joy of learning and creating with new tools. It was suddenly opening breaches in the known universe. This intoxication, this uncertain risk, wavering and furiously free. Clarika dances again, suspended above the void. The lyrics have something of that, a persistence in chaos. "Ce soir je sors" is an impertinent slingshot amidst what is collapsing. The words draw from a constellation of images, a mix of observations and intimate evocations, sometimes dreamlike, sometimes blunt. Her pen continues to anchor itself in this kind of laughing acuity. She amuses herself like this, brushes against insolence in "Seule la mort" and insults her beloved abandoned cigarette in "Adieu salope" - composed by Fred Pallem.