Silvia Costa

The multi-disciplinary Tunisian festival Dream City is moving to Aubervilliers at the joint invitation of the Festival d'Automne and La Commune, with the shared desire to make this area rustle, resonate and dream through a dozen creations by international performing and visual artists. 

Starting with ordinary everyday gestures such as feeding, living together and getting around, Sofiane Ouissi explores our relationship with birds. Passionate about encounters and the journeys they generate, this time he delves into the relationship with another species.

Artists Jumana Manna and Sille Storihle, Manthia Diawara, Michael Rakowitz & Robert Chase Heishmans will be in La Commune from 20 to 28 September to present five works and invite you to take part in two conversations.
The works of Nil Yalter will be on display in the public space of Aubervilliers.

After a decade of chaotic but richly experienced democratic apprenticeship, Tunisia found itself plunged into a new cycle of its post-colonial history from 2021 onwards. From that date onwards, Kaïs Saïed, who was democratically elected in 2019, assumed all the powers, transforming a fledgling democracy into an autocracy.

The first black bishop appointed by the Catholic Church should have settled in Utica, Tunisia, but never did. His story is the starting point for Sammy Baloji's work.

Winter Family is an experimental music and documentary theatre duo founded by Israeli artist Ruth Rosenthal and French musician Xavier Klaine. They play minimal, obsessive, abrasive and political music. They created H2 Hebron, their 3rd show in 2018, a documentary piece in which the transcription of nearly 500 pages of testimonies, their translation, selection and reappropriation by Winter Family are the central element and the main dramaturgical material of the show.

Sorour Darabi, the Iranian choreographer, who has been living in France since 2013, unveils his first opera, an ambulatory performance which enables voices marginalized by ancient myths to be heard. It is a piece devised by and for committed bodies.

Like descending into the darkest depths of hell, Carolina Bianchi exposes the unspeakable horror of sexist violence, plunging us into a median space in which all memory becomes blurred. Following in the footsteps of the artist Pippa Bacca, she uses her own body for the purposes of the piece, thereby anchoring herself in the history of feminist performance, and casting a critical gaze upon it at the same time.

These two one-person shows, Biokhraphia et Riding on a cloud, are an investigation into the self-portrait. In Riding on a Cloud, a man called Yasser speaks into a dictaphone, projects videos and broadcasts recordings, whilst expressing reservations about the extent to which these documents coincide with his true self. In Biokhraphia, it is Lina Majdalanie who becomes the subject of a very unusual interview.

These two one-person shows, Biokhraphia and Riding on a cloud, are an investigation into the self-portrait. In Riding on a Cloud, a man called Yasser speaks into a dictaphone, projects videos and broadcasts recordings, whilst expressing reservations about the extent to which these documents coincide with his true self. In Biokhraphia, it is Lina Majdalanie who becomes the subject of a very unusual interview.

Inspired by the work of Marcel Pagnol, this show explores the theme of escape. Some of the actors had their first experience of theatre at the Maison centrale d'Arles prison. Marius provides audiences with a unique opportunity to discover a little-known but crucial dimension of Joël Pommerat's art.

Brought to the stage by visual artist Théo Mercier, Skinless is a disenchanted Eden built on a landscape of rubbish. Amidst this XXL end-of-the-world panorama, an out of the ordinary couple loves and tears each other apart under the watchful eye of a tragic observer.

Directed by Romeo Castellucci, Gustav Mahler's Resurrection symphony seems to take on all its tragic grandeur. Masterfully conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Italian director magnifies this monumental work in order bring us a funereal “song of the earth” from which nobody emerges unscathed.

A year after the premier of IRIS at the Butte-aux-Cailles swimming pool, commissioned by the Festival d'Automne, in which he explored the Italian polyphonic repertoire, Alessandro Sciarroni brings us U. (un canto). This music-based performance piece evokes the profoundly mysterious relationship between human beings and nature.

Following on from the Portrait dedicated to her by the Autumn Festival two years ago, Marlene Monteiro Freitas hijacks the match: twenty-five virtuoso performers, each wearing the same number 3 vests, throw the score into disarray, measure themselves against the grotesque and warp the game. This show sees the eccentric choreographer passing on to the Lyon Opera Ballet a jousting match of hybrid times, a carnivalesque fresco in which the human, animal and machine have a tendency to merge.