une édition 2021 tout feu tout flamme
The Bordeaux International Arts Festival ended with a fiery finish from Opéra Pagaï. The opportunity to return to the favorites of Rue89 Bordeaux of a 2021 edition which wants to draw a line from the horrors of the health crisis.
A plaice on the roof of the Scène nationale Carré-Colones, a flock of sheep on the large plateau, an eclade of mussels right in the center of Saint-Médard-en-Jalles… “La Coulée Douce” signed by the Opéra Pagaï is place to close an International Festival of the Arts of Bordeaux (FAB) with a popular celebration that we no longer expected with the horrors of the health crisis.
For this sketches along a poetic journey lit by troches, candles and fire pots, 110 people got together: around forty Pagaï Opera and as many guest artists, as well as the Carré-Colonnes teams. , including its director Sylvie Violan, and his assistant Hélène Debacker. This highlight highlights, and it is the case to say it, both the garden – open and maintained last year during the various confinements -, and the Carré des Jalles totally accessible to the places usually closed in the public (offices, backstage, roof, etc.). An enchanting celebration of the reopening of the venues.
Thus ends the 2021 edition of the FAB which has honored all its appointments (only the visit of the Lebanese Alexandre Paulikevich has been canceled). A bet to say the least won at the end of a health crisis which did not fail to disrupt commitments and prospects. Rue89 Bordeaux looks back on his favorites.
Love at first sight: “Larsen C” by Christos Papadopoulos
A slap ! It’s the word that comes to mind when you think about it. On the stage of La Manufacture CDCN, “Larsen C” came to confirm all the mastery of Christos Papadopoulos. This former disciple of Dimitris Papaioannou, a major choreographer of the contemporary Greek scene, masterfully led a successful experience, strangely inspired by the stall of a 5,800 km iceberg.2 of the Larsen C ice barrier in Antarctica in July 2017.
To the millimeter, the choreography is mathematical so much a degree of gestural mastery was required. The quality of the movements and waves of the body offered haunting curls in a space delimited by radical lighting. The dancers competed in precision, from the most tortuous postures to impassive faces and tenacious gazes. “Larsen C” is undoubtedly the confirmation of an already big name in contemporary dance to remember.
Coup de fouet: “Searching for John” by Stefan Kinsman / Cie La Frontera
It’s a strange zigoto who crisscrossed Bordeaux in dilapidated outfit at certain times in the FAB. The Bordelais were challenged by his tirades in English from another time, before finding him in a wonderfully fable, “Searching for John”, presented under a big top on the Terres Neuves esplanade in Bègles. Stefan Kinsman, from the National Circus Arts Center and associated since 2019 (until 2022) with the Pôle national cirque de Nexon, in New Aquitaine, has forged a style fueled by street performances, refined here with the complicity of a classmate Juan Ignacio Tula.
We then find John Henry, an imaginary character both taciturn and talkative who embodies a poetry of solitude. Under his straw hat, he is a traveler in search of himself but also of a society where objects take on the role of companions and stage partners. In a framework of odds and ends, Stefan Kinsman sets up a phantasmagorical story. In chewed English, he speaks to himself and asks himself: “Where are you John?” »After numerous metamorphoses, the character finds himself for company a rocking chair, an articulated lamp, and a crackling radio… Comic or enigmatic, circus or theater, different languages mingle and call upon various disciplines dear to the artist, up to his favorite object the Cyr wheel in a Homeric finale.
Phone call: “Open lines” from Cie Basinga
About 2000 people had their eyes riveted on the sky of Pinçon park in the city of Benauge on this sunny afternoon of a Sunday in October. On 200 meters, 35 meters above the ground, Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga is about to set off on a wire that connects a crane to a building in the city. Admittedly, everyone’s breath was cut off and the tension was at its peak. The Basinga company tightrope walker has no safety attachment and the public could only watch her with their eyes to support her.
At 5.30 p.m., barely with the first foot balanced, the ease of the tightrope walker is astounding as quickly as the pressure drops (or almost): splits, dance steps, reverse, pole dance number with the balance bar bordering on … and with a smile please. After half an hour and a demonstration of virtuosity and cold blood, Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga reached the building to the applause of the crowd, the inhabitants of the city and the (relieved?) Organizers. This performance offered to the FAB by the team of Chahuts an undoubtedly marked the spirits.
Hard blow: “Fuck You” by Marina Otero
It is the spectacle which put the FAB in all its forms and in all the senses of the word. Let’s start with the scene. Marina Otero is expected for “Fuck Me”, the last part of a self-fiction trilogy premiered in 2020 at the Buenos Aires International Festival. Originally conceived as a solo, it is a performance on the wear and tear of the body that is written by the Argentinian choreographer from his hospital bed, then immobilized by a back operation. On the stage, five dancers lend their bodies, naked and bandaged muscles, to all the cavalcades imposed by the choreographer present as a master tamer. The show, extravagant, extreme, trashy, has the effect of a bomb and piles up standing ovations, until the last evening when the great hall Vitez, full as an egg, discovers an unexpected outcome. “The only one I want is for you to love me.” Because I no longer love myself, ”Marina Otero said at the microphone. No need to say more.
This unbridled performance finds an improbable flip side. Facebook deactivates the FAB account and deletes without warning or explanation its page, followed by more than 10,000 people. The organizers attribute this measure to the publication of photos of dancers taken during the “Fuck Me” show.
Blow of bluff: “True Copy” of the Berlin collective
Who remembers Geert Jan Jansen, Dutch painter and forger, arrested in 1994 after bluffing the art world? 1,600 works by great masters such as Picasso, Dalí, Appel, Matisse and Hockney … and some of which are undoubtedly still on the walls of major museums, are in fact the work of this man to whom the Berlin collective is devoting a conference-show . Faithful to a documentary theater that is as instructive as it is confusing, the group of Belgian artists presents here the daring journey of a gifted copywriter until his fall for … a spelling error in a certificate that aroused the suspicions of the police.
“I deceived the whole world and I get trapped by a stupid” s “in excess at the end of a word”, admits Geert Jan Jansen on the visible side of the stage of the Carré des Jalles, the other side being dedicated to his workshop and only visible on screens by an ingenious video device. The spectator is thus allowed to embark on the details of a story between manual cheating and improvised auction, to the rhythm of a forger who, for his part, leads his conference on and to the point of deception.
At a glance: “Rain” by Meytal Blanaru
Meytal Blanaru assists the spectator at the back of the stage of La Manufacture. She watches everyone take their places, their hands behind their backs, their legs bent against a post. The room is full. She walks up to the middle of the stage where the sound of a full-string strummed electric guitar launches haunting music. Meytal Blanaru has a story to share, a traumatic event from her childhood.
The choreography springs from the fingertips of a hand that wobbles like a leaf in the wind. The beginning, almost imperceptible, invites you to listen. One shoulder is raised, then one leg on the tip of the foot, then a sway, then a horizontal elbow. “Rain” is a reading of the body before being a dance, at the end of each movement a word. Then the sentences like the gestures follow one another. We won’t grasp the pain of memory right away, but the persistent gaze of the Israeli choreographer invites us to become aware of a seriousness. An hour passes with great delicacy, like a precious confidence, that of the memory of a sexual abuse that Meytal Blanaru wants to pose there, in motion.