Number. House number. Queue number. Social security number. Numbered bank accounts… What’s in a name, indeed.

What’s in a number?

Our days are numbered.

Here are the numbers for one of our more recent beasts: On 7 January 2015, 2 perps, previously reduced from petty criminality to cruel idiocy by religious fanaticism, shot up the premises of the weekly satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, murdering in cold blood the 12 people they found there. They took off and went into hiding. The next day, another perp, presulably working in tandem with the two others, murdered 1 unwary trainee police woman. The next day, 9 January 2015, he went to a specialty supermarket and slaughtered, gangland execution-style, 4 shoppers – taking care to describe them as “Jews” – in the process taking more than 20 hostages. All 3 murderers were killed by special police on 9 January 2017, 2 of them in a building where they had holed-up, 1 at the scene of his crimes, at about 5.15 pm.

On 14 January 2015, Charlie Hebdo published as usual, going from its usual 60,000 copies to 7.5 million and Nathalie Vadori-Gauthier started dancing one minute a day, she says, to “resist barbary” with an act of “poetic resistance”, which will continue until 10 October 2017; at the time, she did not envisage an end. Each dance is posted on video and archived on the Une minute de dance par jour site.

“Resistance”, if I understand Vadori-Gauthier, means affirming one set of values in the face of another. In my own mind, in face of nihilistic hostility, the only sensible answer is throw yourself at it, fists and feet flailing. Again, Vadori-Gauthier, following Nietzche, believes “the day is lost if one has not danced at least once.”

Dancing 1 minute each day, she says, is an act of positive resistance for liberty in two ways, Vadori-Gauthier says. “It affirms the body” in a society that tends to dismiss it in favor of a narrow definition of mind and “it affirms the female body in the face of the patriarchy’s effort to define then control it.”

Besides, she says, dancing is something that she has been able do herself, alone, while being with us all: it is a “micro-political gesture”, a tiny drop of water on the stone of Moloch. At any minute the water, against all expectation, will pierce the stone through.

Vadori-Gauthier believes “poetry is life living”. The body is always real, like the weather, she says, and “dance is poetry’s port of entry; dancing leads to connection.” Above and beyond the political gesture, she began dancing as a contribution to our co-evolution towards “a sweeter way of living.”

“Une minute de dance par jour” will stop at the 1001^st minute, at the 16.683^rd hour – she says 6 hours of preparation lies behind each video number, so also at the 1001^st workday –  on the 10 October 2017. Vadori-Gauthier has not yet decided whether the 1001^st performance will be a denouement, a consequence, a result, a look forward or a look back, inside, outside, solo or plural. The pre-finale, dance 1000, will be 9 October 2017 at 8 pm, will however, include all those who have taken part in the dance until then. In the days that follow the finale, Vadori-Gauthier’s looking forward to working on dance on its “vibratory” side – « our bones shine, » she says. Stay tuned.

The dance video archive of Une minute de dance par jour – nicely organized by themes and place, mostly – is a fantastic resource.

Vadori-Gauthier’s dance numbers have been and will continue to be, up until the 10 October finale, at least, sometimes spontaneous – one one-minute rush from a number of danced minutes – sometimes spontaneously reworked, sometimes made by design. Sometimes the dance is accompanied with music, sometimes without, sometimes in unexpected places – which explains why disembodied security people seem always to say “Stop dancing like that” – this Vadori-Gauthier woman knows a lotof dances, but apparently not all of them. Sometimes a dance is solo Vadori-Gauthier, sometimes her together, with friends or strangers.

The dances wind up covering every conceivable condition and mood, I think, that can be represented by a single, good-humored, sincere human being.  Vadori-Gauthier’s fantastically accurate at showing what words mean: former President François Hollande’s announcement that he’ll not seek re-election, for instance, is quite simply a piece of dancing genius.

Above and beyond this lovely idea of poetic resistance through dance and the loveliness of many of the performances, the archive, à la Blaise Pascale, might constitute a kind of videoed Pensées… a Gestes de ressentis (“Deeds of feeling”) you might say, a dictionary of representation of mood and feeling. And as well as a dictionary of gesture, the video archive is a tour guide,  taking you on one of the most intimate tours of Paris you can take, not just through places but through the news and ideas and emotions of 3 years.

The following dances were the 20 videos most liked on Facebook over the past 3 years, out of a total of 893, 000 views

1. 29 November 2015 – dance 320 – CRS Riot police during a demonstration for the climate accords
2. 22 March 2016 – dance 434 – Brussels terrorist attack
3. 16 April 2017 – dance 824 – support for homosexuals in Chechnya
4. 5 June 2016 – dance 509 – Raphael, a handicapped dancer
5. 23 January 2016 – dance 375 – the Calais immigrant “Jungle” encampment
6. 13 December 2015 – dance 334 – polling station
7. 7 June 2017 – dance 876 – a chemotherapy patient in a hospital
8. 27 May 2016 – dance 500 – MCC with Théo Lawrence and a passing minister
9. 24 February 2016 – dance 407 – Little girl
10. 8 January 2017 – dance 726 – 13th arrondissement, Paris, violoncello
11. 15 November 2015 – dance 306 – Bells tolling at Notre-Dame
12. 30 May 2017 – dance 668 – 13th arrondissement, Paris
13. 7 January 2017 – dance 725 – Charlie, 2 years old
14. 21 December 2016 – dance 708 – Retirement home
15. 1 July 2017 – dance 900 – Simone Veil (former minister, feminist, author of abortion rights law)
16. 24 January 2017 – dance 742 -ballroom
17. 10 April 2017 – dance 818 – the Butte aux Cailles neighborhood, 13th arrondissement, Paris
18. 5 January 2017 – dance 723 – Christmas tree on the sidewalk
19. 18 January 2017 – dance 736 – Cold snap
20. 31 January 2017 – dance 749 – Francine, 94 years old

Une minute de dance par jour has been supported by Paris Reseau Danse, L’Etoile du nord, Micadanses-ADDP, Le Regard du cygne performance studio and the City of Paris.