Pour Deux Mains describes, for me, a choice. It suggests a sense of delusion and uncertainty when faced with a dilemma, the consequences of which we cannot see. The solution is neither simple nor obvious but the essence that guides it invites us to follow her in a delicate contradiction. This sensation was accurately described by Seamus Heaney in his poems The Gravel Walks where he invites us to “walk on air against [our] better judgement.”

Heaney also described his poem by saying it represented a “paradoxical sense of lightness when lifting heavy things.”. And it is indeed this lightness in the face of choosing difficulty that represents the motivation for this piece. It is a choice that is not only to follow an uncertain path but also to allow oneself to be taken by it, to give it our strength, our hands and our future.

Pour Deux Mains was commissioned by the Ensemble InterContemporain and Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.