In collaboration with Etienne Bideau-Rey:

Showroomdummies #2

Cast

Directing, choreography and scenography Etienne Bideau-Rey & Gisèle Vienne
Original music and performance live : Peter Rehberg except one song created and interpreted by Tujiko Noriko on a music arranged by KTL (Stephen O’Malley & Peter Rehberg)
Light  Patrick Riou
Costumes’ design José Enrique Ona Selfa
Make-up Rebecca Flores
Created in collaboration with, and performed by Jonathan Capdevielle, Gaël Depauw, Guillaume Marie, Anne Moussellet, Anja Röttgerkamp & Tujiko Noriko
Original cast (2001) Olivier Balzarini, Jonathan Capdevielle, Ugo Dehaes, Yves-Noël Genod, Marie Caroline Hominal, Hélène Iratchet, Peter Rehberg, Patrick Riou & Noriko Tujiko
With the technical support of Le Quartz Scène nationale Brest
Costumes’ making Marino Marchand
Production & touring Bureau Cassiopée
Acknowledgements to Walter Lecompte (furrier) & Ganterie Causse

Partners

Executive producer DACM

 

Creation 2001
Coproducer Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy in the frame of the project Banane Bleue supported by Région Rhône-Alpes & Le Cargo – Maison de la culture de Grenoble
With the support of Centre Chorégraphique National de Grenoble in the frame of accueil-studio 2001, Ministère de la Culture – DRAC Rhône-Alpes, Institut International de la Marionnette, Brise Glace de Grenoble, Fondation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, Fondation de France & European Union – EU program for Youth
With the support of Ville de Grenoble & Conseil Général de l’Isère

 

Re-creation 2009
Coproducer Le Quartz Scène nationale Brest (Gisèle Vienne is associate artist from 2007 to 2011)
With the support of the Parc National de la Villette for providing a rehearasal studio

Presentation

Showroomdummies conveys the initial stages of our artistic language. We wish to tackle the core material of performance, one of its main features being the constant rewriting, both major and minor, that takes place from one show to another. What interests us is the actual process of rewriting.

Rewriting this show is unleashing a particular creative process, whereby crucial elements of our work, which emerged back in 2001 during the first version, are challenged and developed through the topics and methods that have been emerging ever since that time.

From inertia to disorder, mechanical breakdown.

Showroomdummies probes the border between animate and inanimate, as well as the relationship between real life and its representation. With this show, our aim is to highlight the chaos that a living body can trigger when it grazes the inanimate, and the passion it can ignite through its mere and unique presence, which can be at once immobile and provocative.

Drawing on the character of Wanda von Dunajew from L. von Sacher-Masoch’s novel Venus in Furs, we are interested in the unsettling eroticism that can emerge from outer appearance and immobility.

The body-language is chiefly shaped by the turmoil-dynamics that arises from eroticism and repulsion in face of inertia. The inertia of the figure portrayed by Wanda von Dunajew is expressed, in part, through her icy character. The Wanda figure exudes an unsettling ambiguity caused by her intimacy with both the mannequin and death. She disrupts and endures her environment; she is willingly manipulated by her director-lover, while acting out the role of manipulator.

Our work will focus on plasticity and gesture in order to probe the unique relationship between the existence of an image and the existence of real beings. The dramaturgy ensues from the image and from the body-language of the dancer, actor and mannequin, straddling their contrasts not by fusing them, but rather by bringing about their encounter.

Through choreography, the stylized body can move away from the everyday body and closer to the body that is imagined and represented, and thereby artificial. The choreography of Showroomdummies will thus mingle dancers and mannequins in a common language.

History

Press