In collaboration with Etienne Bideau-Rey:

Showroomdummies

Cast

Directing and choreography Etienne Bideau-Rey & Gisèle Vienne
Original music performed live by Pita / Peter Rehberg with the special appearance of Noriko Tujiko
Scenography and mannequins Etienne Bideau-Rey
Light Patrick Riou
Technical direction Pierre Marchand
Video Vincent Voillat
Administration Anne-Claire Rigaud

With Olivier Balzarini, Jonathan Capdevielle, Ugo Dehaes, Marie-Caroline Hominal, Hélène Iratchet & Gisèle Vienne

Acknowledgements to Ballet Preljocaj – Centre Chorégraphique National d’Aix-en-Provence, Barbara Bui & Pascal Humbert

Partners

Executive producer DACM in collaboration with Centre Chorégraphique National de Grenoble
Coproducers Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy & Le Cargo – Maison de la Culture de Grenoble
With the support of Institut International de la Marionnette, Ministère de la Culture – DRAC Rhône-Alpes, Région Rhône-Alpes, Conseil Général de l’Isère,  Fondation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, Fondation de France & European Union – Program for Youth

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