Gisèle Vienne
Crowd
© Estelle Hanania ©
© Estelle Hanania ©
© Mathilde Darel ©
Concept, choreography and scenography, Gisèle Vienne
Assisted by Anja Röttgerkamp and Nuria Guiu Sagarra
With Philip Berlin, Marine Chesnais, Sylvain Decloitre, Sophie Demeyer, Vincent Dupuy, Massimo Fusco, Rehin Hollant, Oskar Landström, Theo Livesey, Louise Perming, Katia Petrowick, Jonathan Schatz, Henrietta Wallberg and Tyra Wigg (alternately with Lucas Bassereau, Nuria Guiu Sagarra, Georges Labbat and Linn Ragnarsson)
Lighting, Patrick Riou
Dramaturgy, Gisèle Vienne, and Dennis Cooper
Music, Underground Resistance, KTL, Vapour Space, DJ Rolando, Drexciya, The Martian, Choice, Jeff Mills, Peter Rehberg, Manuel Göttsching, Sun Electric, and Global Communication
Editing and music selection, Peter Rehberg
Sound diffusion design, Stephen O’Malley
Costumes, Gisèle Vienne in collaboration with Camille Queval and the performers
In association with MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis, le CND Centre national de la danse and Festival d’Automne à Paris.
A production by DACM
A coproduction by Nanterre-Amandiers, centre dramatique national ; Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg – Scène européenne ; Wiener Festwochen ; manège – Scène Nationale – Reims ; Théâtre national de Bretagne – Centre européen de production théâtrale et chorégraphique (Rennes) ; Centre dramatique national Orléans Centre-Val de Loire ; La Filature, Scène nationale (Mulhouse) ; BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen)
In association with MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis (Bobigny) ; CND Centre national de la danse (Pantin) ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
With support from CCN2 – Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble, and CND Centre national de la danse (Pantin)
With thanks to Louise Bentkowski, Dominique Brun, Patric Chiha, Zac Farley, Uta Gebert, Margret Sara Guðjónsdóttir, Isabelle Piechaczyk, Arco Renz, Jean-Paul Vienne, and Dorothéa Vienne-Pollak
With support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
Partnership with France Culture
Crowd, by Gisèle Vienne, a piece for fifteen dancers, muscles its way into a body of work which, over the course of several years, has been dissecting the vast spectrum of our fantasies, emotions, and dark sides, in addition to our inherent need for violence and our sensuality. Flying in the face of the different artistic disciplines, the journey she takes us on renders the onstage experience a cathartic one indeed.
Behind their technical and formal perfection, Gisèle Vienne’s unclassifiable pieces are often perceived as being “unsettling” or “disturbing”. Since Showroomdummies (2001), they been unrelenting in their enquiry into the eternal duality at the core of our humanity – Eros and Thanatos, Apollo and Dionysus – the necessary thirst for violence and sensuality that each of us carries within us, and the place of the erotic and the sacred in our lives. Crowd is a new phase in this single-minded research. Centering on a choreography devised for fifteen performers brought together over the course of a party, this broad reaching polyphony brings to light (of a dark, blinding nature) the various mechanisms underlying such manifestations of collective euphoria, and “the way a specific community handles or otherwise the expression of violence”. After training in music before moving on to the study of puppetry, and feeding off her interest in philosophy and visual arts, Gisèle Vienne brings to the stage a fragmentary universe characterised by the coexistence of several realities. The jerky, halting movements of those that inhabit this universe draw upon urban dance and puppet theatre in equal measure, and Dennis Cooper’s dramaturgy and the DJ set by Peter Rehberg have the combined effect of bringing our perception into disarray. For audience members, this blurring of the frontier between interiority and exteriority is akin to waking up in the midst of a full-on rave. Both resolutely contemporary and archaic in terms of its cathartic dimension, Crowd is the meeting point for a dialogue with our intimate selves.
––––––
For Kerstin
––––––
Running time : 1h30
In the same place
Soa Ratsifandrihana Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna
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.
Jeanne Balibar Les Historiennes
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.
Nacera Belaza La Nuée
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.
Stefan Kaegi, Rimini Protokoll This is not an embassy (Made in Taiwan)
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.
Rosana Cade, Ivor MacAskill The Making of Pinocchio
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.
Joël Pommerat Marius
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.