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Ainsi la nuit
CREATION 2018 - Choreography by Marilén Iglesias-Breuker & Luc Petton

This forth opus Dance/Man/Animal broaches new territories : to dance with nocturnal animals calling out to our ancestral fears, reaching the border of the inconceivable, when the human being, deposed of his predator status, is down to a simple prey.

This creation confronts the body to different states : when it is scared (jumping up in fear, fleeing out of panic,, being seized, frozen..) then when it overcomes his fears (confronting, surmounting, understanding, estimating ) and finally when it is going to the light (becoming calm, freeing itself). Following a subliminal central theme, we are guided in this adventure by the hand of Dante Alighieri (ali-gero means wing carrier) in his Divine Comedy.

Three big scansions punctuate this creation going from the darkest ponderousness to the appearance of the grace “as a woman dancing” until the rapture of light, reaching the edge of a place where “being good is being light”. All the time, it is the cumbersome body that reminds the stake and the shamanic progression :

Hell the body is cursed by its weight, it stumbles, it falls, it contorts itself.
Purgatory, it will be lighter, we see it sweating, bearing its shadow, sensual, the blood racing through its veins.
Heaven, it will become docile and so transparent to the will that it willl know how to fly among the spheres.

The set, although refined, suggests these three stages: hidden trapeze allowing the fall from the ribs, elastic string changing the weight relation and bars offering a support for the hanging flight, weightless.

A new difficult challenge to achieve the peaceful coexistence between the man and the animal on stage, like announcing by St Francis of Assisi mentioned by Dante during his wandering: “ (he) went barefoot first; he hurried toward such peace; and though he ran, he thought his pace too slow”.
On stage are side-by-side different species of animals with a strong imaginary imprint, owls, wolf, vulture… and five artists coming from different body cultures, three dancers, two circus artists. Their paths are quiet eclectic, they were trained in France, Italy, Puerto Rico, China, Norway… each participate to the research of a common language: Babel at work!

What if Heaven was a contemporary stake ? 

BESTIARY /

Owls,
Great grey owls : Arrival of the bird with its quiet flight, the owl brings the night, the reason keep quiet, the senses wake up. Absorption by the night.
Barn owls : Unlike its reputation, it is announced like a small white angel from the night with its soft and quiet flight. It is all grace.

Wolf,
Despite his aura of profound fear that he will dispossessed us of our hunter status to become prey, the wolf appears as a delicate being, sensitive to every glance, to every gesture, constantly on the alert, furtively, open to the invitation.

Vultures,
Inspired by the Parsee and Himalayan traditions, a scene of « celestial funeral » happens unexpectedly. We are surprised by the vulture’s reactivity to the human being and by its puckish cleverness in a knowing duo with an audacious dancer.

SOURCES /

The Divine Comedy. Dante Alighieri
« but my desire and will were moved already – like a wheel revolving uniformly – by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.»

Un régal pour les vautours. Claude Régy
««…and it is an important lesson for men to be considered as food for the taste bud of the vultures (are there any in their beak ?). It's quiet delicious to think that we could be a delight for the vultures.»

Duende, Pratique et théorie du Duende. Federico Garcia Lorca
« the duende is blood business. It burns where it lives because it must be awaken in the last house of blood. Where are they ? the duende is not in the throat, the duende rises from the inside, from the sole of the foot. The body becomes its prey. ».

Ouvrir Vénus. Georges Didi-Huberman
««… by opening the body, it sets the being in motion, against a backdrop of horror and cruelty.»