« Literature is sporadically present in my work. I often need words», Angelin Preljocaj asserts. So, for example, Pascal Quignard crafted L’Anoure for him, a text for his choreography. Then the choreographer became dancer/actor for long enough to perform Jean Genet’s Le funambule. Last of all came the encounter with Laurent Mauvignier, whose story Ce que j’appelle oubli Angelin Preljocaj translated into gestures in 2012. His latest creation, Retour à Berratham, brings them together once more around a dance commission. « A contemporary epic tragedy was what I asked Laurent Mauvignier for ». The choreograph once more wanted to explore human movements as much as words. Dancers and actors are present on stage in a set by the sculptor Adel Abdessemed, « an artist inhabited by the violence of our societies », in the choreographer’s words. The states of bodies after war run through these lines. « The story begins where a war piece would finish, » writes Laurent Mauvignier. In the eyes of Angelin Preljocaj, it chiefly concerns a question, that of this young man who comes back to Berratham in search of the woman he loves, Katja. He no longer recognises anything. And while looking for Katja he returns to his childhood, his past. This transfiguration of beings and places is shown in the text. What is at stake is collateral damage. For Laurent Mauvignier, « this story is also the wave of shock and violence, of wounded memory, of the survival instinct. » It is the purpose of Angelin Preljocaj’s dance to soothe scars. For Katja. For us. »