"She felt extraordinarily empty, empty hands, empty stomach, empty head, in that state of absolute vacuity, enchanted and pessimistic, that one experiences on completing something important and decisive."

This state described by Joseph Delteil when talking of Joan of Arc is one often experienced when coming off stage. When one is still caught up in the atmosphere of performance - a moment suspended in time. It is this particular mood and its ensuing gestures which interest me. This moment so condensed that it becomes a vacuum to be filled with a phenomenon approaching the sacred spheres. They are seven, seven attempting to dance on the site of illumination, seven women in a state of extreme and absolute receptivity.

Of Joan of Arc, it was also said that she was the meeting point of many symbols: virginity, war, purification, saintliness, self-denial. These figures are sometimes contradictory, and yet I would like to find some record of their convergence, which would then help me to give to this army of women the meaning and reasons of a suppressed exaltation."