Steven Cohen

If, up until now, the performances of the South African artist have consisted of exposing himself onstage or in public spaces, in his latest piece Steven Cohen plays host to audiences from within the confines of an intimate, private space, the boudoir. The latter, a chapel or refuge, becomes a place in which he gathers up his memories of his past - as well as those of the last century, gruesome though they may be.

Committing moving bodies to a contemporary form of orality, Soa Ratsifandrihana, the guitarist Joël Rabesolo and performers Audrey Mérilus and Stanley Ollivier draw on their diasporic narratives and origins to tell a story they would have liked to hear or see. The three Malagasy words Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna, meaning comparison, transmission and rivalry, form variations in which the performers slide in and out of different states and seem to follow a movement in perpetual metamorphosis.

In Territoires, Mathilde Monnier will be taking over the galleries of the Centre Pompidou during the course of a weekend in order to bring us a piece that deals with memory and circulation, "a collection of gestures from her work over the past thirty years". In doing so, the choreographer sets up the possibility of playing out memory in the present, from now onwards, or by means of anticipation.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul presents the complete retrospective of his films at the Centre Pompidou. It consists of his eight feature films, thirty or so short (and rare) films, various collective works, and two feature films produced by him.

The Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul is guest at the Festival d'Automne and Centre Pompidou. His exhibition, featuring around ten video installations, transforms the former solarium into a nocturnal space inhabited by biographical and architectural reminiscences.

The Thai filmmaker's second foray into performance art, A Conversation with the Sun (VR), extended edition, presented in Paris in a new version enhanced by a third part, uses virtual reality to create the conditions for a collective dream.

Three women return from the past thanks to three female contemporary historians who bring them back to life via three separate accounts. Here, the actress Jeanne Balibar uses them as the basis for a staged reading. Four women from today’s world take a particularly eloquent and incisive look at three emblematic female destinies.

In Still Not Still, choreographer Ligia Lewis pursues her exploration into the silences and shadows of history. In this piece, the performers play out a score over and over again, the burlesque dimension of which makes it all the more tragic.

With a reputation for minimalist and captivating choreographies, Nacera Belaza continues the exploration of the circle and rhythm she initiated with Le Cercle (2019) and L'Onde (2021), both landmarks in her choreographic language. Following on from an initial period of creation in Brussels in May 2024, the choreographer then enlarged the creative process of La Nuée by inviting ten new performers to the stage.

Rimini Protokoll's roving director Stefan Kaegi takes us, in the company of three native performers and residents, to the island of Taiwan. The fictional element of this show, in which the onstage action filmed live takes us through the twists and turns of a miniature décor, points to a somewhat grotesque geopolitical reality.

Drawing upon Collodi's tale, the Cade-MacAskill duo uses theatre to investigate the little- explored realms of queer love and affection. In doing so, they tell the story of gender transition and its repercussions on the couple. The piece itself, The Making of Pinocchio, becomes a burlesque-inspired manifesto for different forms currently under construction.

Over its forty years of existence, with Tim Etchells at the helm, the company has never stopped reinventing itself. And it continues to do so. Amidst an oscillating form of virtual reality, six performers find themselves deprived of their voices and their entire beings. The whole thing goes beyond all understanding... Welcome to this new world.

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.

Sébastien Kheroufi discovered Peter Handke's Par les villages at the onset of his artistic career. It evokes a writer's return to his native village. Amidst the twilight setting in which one universe declines in favour of another, the voices of the “offended and humiliated” break their silence.