The setting: a large 9 meter high and 160 meter square empty space, the inside of the pile of the bypass bridge in Saint-Gervais (a mountain village) chosen to serve as a film studio on that occasion. The murmuring of the torrent, the birds nesting under the bridge, the few vehicles driving by, the resonance of the void endow the site with its sound identity.
One by one, bodies move in the centre of the space: they close their eyes, concentrate, make a singular move and then wake up. They are athletes of different disciplines who mentally rehearse their performance. Following the mirror neurones functioning, it is assumed that imagining an action activates more or less the same cerebral zones than when the action is undertaken physically. This is what encourages athletes to play with the plasticity of their brain by mentally practicing extra-ordinary movements, aiming for automatisms as ordinary as putting one foot in front of the other or reacting to danger. Climbing, skiing, motor-racing, bob-sleighing, pole vaulting, aerobatics… Each athlete was chosen for its specific mental training practice and the complexity of the setting in which he performs. Whether it is kayaking down a 12 meter high waterfall, doing perilous jumps on skis on the edges of a 7 meter high snow wall (half-pipe) or gliding in an ergonomic suit from the top of a mountain to the bottom of a valley (wingsuit), there is a burlesque-like gap between what is going on in the head of these bodies and their singular movements in this large concrete void. The athletes’ almost hypnotic concentrations, their unconscious expressiveness, the sounds of their breathing, their movements reduced to the draft stage reveal a choreography of mind. The performance is named after the mental exercise repeated before their choreographies by French Air Patrol pilots, who call it ”making the music”, thereby evoking the idea of a ritornello or a score.