Jan Martens

VOICE NOISE

Dance
Théâtre de la Ville – Sarah Bernhardt
novembernov 19 – 23

© Phile Deprez ©

© Phile Deprez ©

© Phile Deprez ©

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Creation 2024

1h30

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Théâtre de la Ville – Sarah Bernhardt

Tuesday november 19

20h

Wednesday november 20

20h

Thursday november 21

20h

Friday november 22

20h

Saturday november 23

15h

Choreography Jan Martens. Co-creation and performance Elisha Mercelina, Steven Michel, Courtney May Robertson, Mamadou Wagué, Loeka Willems, Sue-Yeon Youn and/or Pierre Adrien Touret, Zora Westbroek. Music 13 music pieces sung by women. Rehearsals Zora Westbroek, Naomi Gibson. Lighting design Jan Fedinger. Costume design Sofie Durnez. Scenography Joris van Oosterwijk. Sound design Vincent Philippart, Valentijn Weyn, Jo Heijens. Vocal coaching Ine Claes, Maxime Montjotin. Realisation costumes and scenography Théâtre de Liège. Interns Malick Cissé, Sien Wils. Artistic advice Marc Vanrunxt, Rudi Meulemans, Femke Gyselinck. Trailer and teasers Stanislav Dobák. Graphic design Nick Mattan. Tour engineers Elke Verachtert, Valentijn Weyn, Vincent Philippart. 

With
19 November: Elisha Mercelina, Steven Michel, Courtney May Robertson, Mamadou Wagué, Loeka Willems and Sue-Yeon Youn
20 November: Elisha Mercelina, Steven Michel, Courtney May Robertson, Mamadou Wagué, Loeka Willems and Sue-Yeon Youn
21 November: Elisha Mercelina, Courtney May Robertson, Pierre-Adrien Touret, Mamadou Wagué, Loeka Willems and Sue-Yeon Youn 
22 November: Elisha Mercelina, Steven Michel, Courtney May Robertson, Pierre-Adrien Touret, Loeka Willems and Sue-Yeon Youn
23 November: Elisha Mercelina, Steven Michel, Courtney May Robertson, Mamadou Wagué, Loeka Willems and Sue-Yeon Youn

Production GRIP – Anneleen Hermans, Rudi Meulemans, Lize Meynaerts, Klaartje Oerlemans, Jennifer Piasecki, Sylvie Svanberg, Ruud Van Moorleghem, Nele Verreyken
International distribution A Propic – Line Rousseau, Marion Gauvent, Lara van Lookeren 
Coproduction La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand – Scène nationale ; Maison de la danse de Lyon – Pôle Européen de Création ; DE SINGEL (Antwerp) ; Théâtre de Liège ; Julidans (Amsterdam) ; Le Manège, scène nationale – Reims ; Romaeuropa Festival ; DDD – Festival Dias da Dança (Porto) ; Le Carreau – Scène nationale de Forbach et de l’Est mosellan ; Charleroi danse – Centre chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles ; Festspielhaus St-Pölten ; Tanzhaus nrw (Düsseldorf) ; Théâtre de la Ville-Paris ; Équinoxe – Scène nationale de Châteauroux ; Theater Rotterdam ; Perpodium (Antwerp) ; Festival d’Automne à Paris
Residencies La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand – Scène nationale ; DE SINGEL (Antwerp) ; Charleroi danse – Centre chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles
With the support of the Flemish Government; Tax Shelter from the Belgian Federal Government by BNPPFFF
With the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels 

The Théâtre de la Ville-Paris and the Festival d'Automne à Paris are co-producers of this show and present it as a co-realisation.

Jan Martens: Dancing in tune
Read it on Mouvement

With the support of

In this breakthrough piece for Jan Martens, VOICE NOISE brings together six dancers to shape a soundscape comprising some of the great female performers and composers of our time. In his own pop-inspired and precise way, the choreographer questions a very contemporary story, and in doing so raises the question of how some of these voices were silenced. 

“Silence is the woman’s cosmos". In her essay, The Gender of Sound (1992), the author Anne Carson uses this affirmation by Sophocles as one of its main axes. She seeks to understand how, “by ideologically associating the sound of women with monstrosity, disorder and death”, patriarchal culture has reduced women to silence. Jan Martens, leading choreographer on the new Flemish scene, tackles this state of affairs, inviting to the stage the voices of unknown or forgotten innovative women from the last one hundred years of music history. Put into movement by six performers, the dance thus becomes the vehicle for these life stories, a human voice at the crossroads between a cry, whisper, song and protest. In VOICE NOISE, Jan Martens turns away from large ensembles, and gets back to basics, namely that of movement in sharing. Together with Sue-Yeon Youn, Elisha Mercelina and Mamadou Wagué, he draws upon lifelong accomplices Steven Michel, Courtney May Robertson and Loeka Willems in this restorative odyssey.

In the same place

Théâtre de la Ville – Sarah Bernhardt
septembersept 13 – 22

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Radouan Mriziga / Rosas, A7LA5
Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione

Dance

In collaboration with the choreographer and dancer Radouan Mriziga, the challenge taken up by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is to make Vivaldi's Four Seasons heard, using the tools of dance to hone the way we listen to this baroque masterpiece. Under the auspices of abstraction, the resulting alliance reconnects with the imaginary ecological world that is conjured up by this famous concerto.
Théâtre de la Ville – Sarah Bernhardt
septembersept 23 – 28

Rabih Mroué
Who’s Afraid of Representation?

Theatre Portrait

We find ourselves in the company of major figures of European Body Art (Joseph Beuys, Orlan, Marina Abramović, to name a few) via their accounts of exhibitions and public scarifications dating back to the 1970s. In parallel with this runs the true story of a killing spree carried out by a Lebanese office at his workplace, and the fluctuating motivations for his acts.
Théâtre de la Ville – Sarah Bernhardt
octoberoct 3 – 5
Maison des Arts de Créteil
novembernov 6 – 7

Lola Arias
Los días afuera

Theatre
Buy tickets

At the crossroads between musical and documentary, Lola Arias brings us a choral composition in which six female former inmates talk about their lives during and after incarceration. Their six intertwining destinies raise questions about the various forms of violence present in contemporary society, whilst exploring the margins of fiction and reality at the same time.
Théâtre de la Ville – Sarah Bernhardt
novembernov 5 – 16

Robert Wilson
PESSOA – Since I've been me

Theatre

The hero of this new work by Robert Wilson is Fernando Pessoa. And a paradoxical hero at that. The Portuguese poet spent his life 'multiplying himself', inventing heteronyms, or fictitious authors, to whom he attributed works he himself wrote. He even went as far as to invent relationships, either amicable ones or from master to disciple, between his different avatars.