Benjamin Biolay - Isabelle Adjani - Dorothée Gilbert: their plea to save culture

We sometimes underestimate the importance of geometry (and geography!) in our lives. Leftovers from school… Thus, on the eve of confinement, the prima ballerina Dorothée Gilbert stands impeccably perpendicular to the table of our interview, straight as an “i”. Benjamin Biolay, he sips a Coke, almost lying on the table, parallel to the rectangle of Formica. Not only will these positions mark the entire interview with their imprint, their dynamics, but they will only become more accentuated as the minutes go by. She, tense but luminous and disciplined. Him, darker, funny and dissonant. And then, there is, in a corner of the room, Isabelle Adjani, discreetly coming as a free listener to dig up material for the editorial that she signs in this issue. Attentive, she will intervene at the end on this subject which unites all three of them. How to save culture? What are artists for? Is art an essential business?

SHE. How are you feeling today?

Dorothée Gilbert. Stressed. The first confinement was complicated. For a dancer, training at home is a challenge: he lacks the enthusiasm, the gaze, the desire that pushes him to work, to go further, there is no goal of the stage, nor the space nor the ground...

Benjamin Biolay. Let's say that I'm not completely devastated but not very optimistic for the future: it's the total unknown. During the first confinement, in two hours, I realized that my only goal was to play with others. Singing on social networks was a marriage of convenience: I did it as much for them as for me.

SHE. Does an artist without an audience make sense?

Benjamin Biolay. Dance and music are collective professions. Let's say that there, we are in a maintenance phase, like a vehicle in the garage, if you want a comparison.

Dorothée Gilbert. What I miss the most is sharing with the public. We dance for that: this gift, this communion, this exchange, to make people forget the hassles of everyday life. Without an audience, we no longer have a raison d'être, we don't exist. It doesn't matter how many people are in the room. It's a duet.

SHE. Could you be on stage for two people?

Dorothée Gilbert. Of course!

Benjamin Biolay. Still not… [Laughs.]

Dorothée Gilbert. I did it during the first lockdown. It's better than nothing.

Benjamin Biolay. The public is what prevents our jobs from being routine and painful. Every night, on tour, I play the same twenty-six tracks in the same order, and yet, each time, it's unique and different. I don't know if it was Charles Aznavour who said: “It's like love. If it's good for you, it's good for the other one. There is this thing that makes everything legitimate.

SHE. For a dancer, the impact is physical, too?

Dorothée Gilbert. It's almost like asking a 100-meter runner to train at home. When we resumed the shows, we realized how out of shape we were: to be in good shape both in class and during rehearsals, you have to perform.

Benjamin Biolay. It's a virtuous circle. I gave two concerts last week, a marvelous and almost traumatic experience so much we felt that it would not happen again anytime soon. I almost cried. And yet, I'm not at all lachrymal: I was put on the jury of a reality TV show, the "New Star", they wanted me to cry, there was no way. But there, to see people get up in the room with their masks, I was taken with shivers. Afterwards, what happens to us is the ordinary drama of unemployment, of uselessness, of no longer having a function in society, it's something that affects the psyche, it might seem light, I already hear say: "There's still someone worse than you", but no, because we're like all the people who are no longer useful.

SHE. How has this changed your relationship to your jobs?

Benjamin Biolay. After my last concert, I left the stage saying to myself: take a good look at everything one last time. I'm a little young to have such thoughts! Otherwise, I'm not someone who writes especially happy songs, so I don't see how that can change my style! [Laughs.] But it's all pathos...

Dorothée Gilbert. When I got back on stage, it was magical, I realized how precious and precarious it all was. And again, we are lucky, at the Opera, to be protected by the State, to be paid even when we are not working. This has allowed us, so far, to experience this period as a parenthesis.

Benjamin Biolay. You are the world's dance elite, but for one star, there are three million unemployed dancers. And then, in the long term, there is a guy from LREM, a banker, who will tell you: “It pisses the Paris Opera, it costs too much. The most depressing thing is that we thought we had a base, a kind of social legitimacy, but nothing, the contempt of the public authorities for our activities is impressive.

SHE. Have you been disappointed by the authorities?

Benjamin Biolay. Obviously, there is no consultation, no dialogue. No one explains things to us, takes the trouble to talk to us. When I launch a tour of seventy-six dates, I find it a bit stiff to learn that it will not be done by the voice of the President of the Republic live, on TV, after twelve minutes of suspense. It's not my thing.

SHE. Does Roselyne Bachelot do the job at the Ministry of Culture?

Benjamin Biolay. I found her speech courageous during the curfew, but you have to see the snub she took in return. I would have liked a lecture on the fact that culture costs money but brings in a lot. They only see the Paris Opera, they don't see the thousands of dance teachers in the provinces who give lessons to kids, they don't see the fact that, when I go to a show, afterwards I dine next door , I take a taxi home, etc. It's a set of things, a system of communicating vessels, which means that the crop yields a lot of wheat. In March, we said nothing, they got a pandemic in their head, but there they could have talked to us. The lack of coordination, consultation, discussion is quite frightening. I'm surrounded by people in crazy precariousness, all the musicians, the technicians... I can't help but be a little angry.

SHE. Would you say art is an essential business? Basic necessities?

Dorothée Gilbert. Of course, because he heals people's souls! And they need it right now.

Benjamin Biolay. Spectators have said very moving things to me, like: “If you're depressed, it's not good for your immune system. It's not so much a question of concerts as of finding a bit of pleasure in life, of escape, of elevation. Culture is a French specificity, which goes from C. Jérôme to Chanel.

Dorothée Gilbert. We need to be able to rise spiritually through art and through something other than religion. I regret that certain cultural fields such as ballet are still very elitist, very expensive and too inaccessible to young people.

Benjamin Biolay. It's not up to us to say that art is essential, that we have to save culture, it's like we're preaching for our chapel, it's to the people who govern us.

SHE. It is true that artists who mobilize sometimes arouse mixed reactions…

Benjamin Biolay. There is a “shut up” side, yeah! Someone very high up said to me: “You don't give a damn, your album works. They didn't understand that it was an ultra-collegiate thing.

SHE. What do you expect from the state?

Benjamin Biolay. Let him think about his youth, let's stop penalizing young people, pointing fingers at them, let's offer them somewhat dignified things. In this very dark period, recognize that the future of the nation is not the old, even if they are the ones who vote! A country that does not take care of its youth is a bad sign. With a young president, it's amazing.

Dorothée Gilbert. I am waiting for solutions to be able to dance, sing, play despite the constraints. New ideas, new desires. The public is there. He showed that he was not afraid.

SHE. What does art bring you on a daily basis?

Benjamin Biolay. It saved my life! I couldn't see myself doing anything else. But someone who would like to start in music today… if it's in an interview for a magazine, I would say to them: “Go ahead, nothing tries and nothing gains. But if it's my little nephew or my daughter, who is a teenager, I say to him: “Get your baccalaureate first! I know, it's awful.

Dorothée Gilbert. My daughter is 6 and a half years old, so it's fine, she has understood everything – we stay at home to protect the most vulnerable – and is living it well. At this age, there are still few social interactions.

Benjamin Biolay. For teenagers, it's hard, we prevent them from having sex!

(Isabelle Adjani, bubbly, speaks when asked for the final word.)

Isabelle Adjani. People are like us, they stand upright, saying to themselves: we hold on, we hold on. Me, I have a lot of trouble with the injunction to hold on until you get sick, because what about the “next world” which is preparing? Or rather, what about a “world with”? There is something to feel manipulated.

SHE. Manipulated?

Isabelle Adjani. This famous Scientific Council and its followers talk to us about science like a religion. You have to have faith in their preaching.

SHE. And to come back to the artists?

Isabelle Adjani. The condescending view of our profession is reflected in all the instructions. We are told again: "Adapt", as if it were not the very nature of our work to adapt!

Benjamin Biolay. Absolutely, it's insulting. When we are told: “Reinvent yourself”, “Ride the tiger”… but I do that every morning, it's my job.

Isabelle Adjani. From the start, the “prepare yourself” side, “write your scenarios for when we deconfine”, it's humiliating. In May, there was a sumptuous interview with Christophe Honoré in "Le Monde", absolutely truthful and melancholy. He said there, in summary: don't think that it won't leave traces, that it will be without consequences, no, it's not time that we are given, it's time that we are given take. But, to understand that, you have to be noticeably curious about the virtuous relationship that artists have with their work and with the notion of transmission that underpins their vocation for most of them, at least that goes for me. Our existence is not incidental, artists secrete powerful antidotes, if we castrate them, if we standardize them, if we impose on them a program that depersonalizes the way in which they perform, we blur all creativity… We might as well erase ourselves. Anything but reinvent yourself.

Benjamin Biolay. The only artistic thing is blur… in France!

Isabelle Adjani.We also behave a bit like people guilty of occupying a special place in society, even if we contribute symbiotically to keeping it alive, as Benjamin says. Artists are worried, in the times of judgment that run, to be perceived as indecent to assert their indignation as “spoiled rotten cultural people”. Do you find it normal that there are so many subsidies in culture in France, and this and that…? If you bring it back, beware! Yes, yes, we are guilty, sorry, sorry, excuse us, it's not fair, huh, we don't have the right...

Benjamin Biolay. It's true that you get thrown into the ropes as soon as you say something. In people's imagination, when you're an artist, either you're fired up or you're crazy.

Isabelle Adjani. For my part, I can't see myself continuing to experience it this way.

Dorothée Gilbert. For me, the hardest thing is not being able to project myself at all, to live from day to day, I hate that, but it's a question of temperament.

Benjamin Biolay. I'm very afraid for creativity, I don't have a friend, and I include myself in the lot, who has been writing a good song for nine months.

Isabelle Adjani. Embarrassing to be treated like dissipated scholars, isn't it? "You don't need perfect conditions to get good grades..."

Benjamin Biolay. All of society is treated like this, so imagine us, the "gogols" of artists!