The Avignon Festival seen from Belgium – Suite n°1: Is the end still our beginning?
Sylvia Botella is a journalist, she is also the playwright of the National Theater of Brussels. We asked him on this closing day of the 76th Festival d’Avignon to give us his personal assessment. She answered twice. Here is his Suite n°1 which looks back on the shows that marked the first part of the festival.
The Black Monk / Kirill Serebrennikov
Anima / Noémie Goudal-Maëlle Poésy … all this in 60 minutes is possible
There are no words to describe what one feels in front of the installation/performance Anima by Noémie Goudal and Maëlle Poésy, if not a deep sadness, difficult to contain in front of the silent images of the three films in sequence shot broadcast on 3 screens in which the spectators are immersed, supported by the heady music of Chloé Thévenin.
The first projection traces the creative process of the work Phoenix by Noémie Goudal presented at the Rencontres de la photographie in Arles. During the night, a palm grove is photographed then printed on large strips of paper that technicians juxtapose. The images are constantly being recomposed. The frame is within the frame. The dramaturgy acts by addition and/or sedimentation. It is not only plastic, it signifies: the story flows into another story. It is the gesture of the full-frame human, which exceeds the geophysical forces and alters the earth. The anthropocene takes all the screens.
Suddenly, on the garden side, the landscape is literally dripping. The paper sofas tear and rise before our eyes, representing in a certain way all the sofas that veil our gaze. “Watch here” is laid bare before the radical realism of the decaying landscapes! Anima make invisible things visible. It is the anthropologist Michel Descola that we hear implicitly in Anima. The piece questions, in a literal way, the culture-nature opposition that contributes to the environmental catastrophe. Nope ! Humans are not outside nature.
If we can’t forget Anima, it’s because we can’t forget Chloé Moglia’s striking gesture which creates a moving break in the story through a sort of dance of infinite grace. She catches herself very gently in the void, catches up by continuing to support herself in what remains of the landscape. “Is the end still our beginning? she seems to be asking us.
If we can’t forget Anima, it is because it provokes a tragic inversion and a strong emotion. If we can’t forget Anima, it’s because we can’t clap. If we can’t forget Anima, it’s because we can’t forget our shame in the face of the burning earth, in the face of the rains of fire, steel, ashes. All this in 60 minutes, it’s possible!
The exhibition Phoenix by Noémie Goudal is presented at the Trinitaires church from August 4 to 18, 22 as part of the Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles.
After the festival: 6 to 14 January 23, Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne, CDN; February 24 and 15, Espace des Arts National Stage of Chalon-sur-Saône; April 19 and 20, Azimut, Antony and Châteney-Malabry
One Song / Stories from the Theater IV by Miet Werlop! – We even see her move in live music
At the edge of the connection which brings together the art of performance, installation, concert, sport, images of A song spring up in a space that is both performative and ritualized. After Milo Rau, Faustin Linyekula and Angelica Liddell, Miet Warlop continues the ambitious project of the series History(ies) of the theater imagined by Milo Rau: giving his story of personal theater a visible form. What does the Belgian artist say? Otherwise the permanent impression of running inside an endless loop, in the process of becoming and having it constantly in front of you!
Miet Warlop signs here a luminous work, responding in a certain way to his first piece De Sportband / Afgetrainde Klanken (2005) – requiem for his brother who died too soon – but in a more peaceful way, shrouded in humor and grace. Here, in the same quest (impossible?), the artists/athletes must fix everything at the same time – the song, the music and the physical effort -, playing on two parallel lines which extend one another: the life and work of the artist. A magical contact is established between the singing performer and the treadmill. Same, between the cellist and the beam. In the gymnasium, we live more intensely!
In One Song, it is not so much a question of highlighting the biographical elements as of revealing the points of contact between the life and the work of the artist in front of a commentator and very often dubious supporters. Life and creation merge less than they respond to similar logics. Human relations are thought of as artistic relations, seems to tell us Miet Warlop. How does the artist work? What is the artist looking for? Miet Warlop makes a magnificent performance of this A song : Right now / When the others are silent / The grapes will burst / Yet sorrow remains a fruit / Yet sorrow remains a fruit. We even see her move to live music.
After the festival: 20 and 21 September 22, Festival Actoral, Marseille; 28 and 29 September 22, Tandem Scène nationale Arras-Douai; 1 to 7 October 22, NT’Gent, Ghent, etc.
Everywhere Water Lilies by Emmanuel Eggermont – One, two, three, blue. We risk being in love.
The room Everywhere Water Lilies continue to amaze us. So much, it is both tragic and poetic, geometric and poignant. Emmanuel Eggermont offers sensitive intelligence and contemplation revealed abstract choreographic motifs that surprisingly emerge us in the deep truths of life.
The scale of the piece is in the vis-à-vis the work of Raymund Hoghe – we recognize, among other things, the motifs of his piece 36 Avenue Georges Mandel, a splendid tribute paid to Callas presented at the Church of the Celestins at the Avignon Festival –; the gesture of Pina Bausch’s playwright – as well as the assembly of stories: the intimate drama and the future of the artist. Several places, several times, several stories intertwine in the same choreographic phrase. Presence and absence come into play simultaneously.
It is the secret song of Monet’s water lilies that the dancers and the magnificent dancers! – applied in their individual trajectories, supposed to set aside all the superfluous to open our eyes wider! Our tears flow, and our whole body is covered with shivers. An unknown happiness envelops us.
This is perhaps what is most upsetting. In Everywhere Water Liliesthe vision is broader, a whole world of possibilities opens up… just watch the dancers “(re)compose” the lines of the Water Lilies carpet to grasp the moment when a new relationship between the artist and creation. Everywhere Water Lilies capture the metamorphosis of Emmanuel Eggermont from other horizons.
Ma jeunesse exaltée / Olivier Py – “(…) I would write in letters of fire on Harlequin’s coat: something is coming! »
The delight of the room My Exalted Youth by Olivier Py is the journey: we walk in the story made up of sorts of colorful sketches for 10 actors as we follow the feverish races riddled with hoaxes of Arlequino – flamboyant Bertrand de Roffignac! -, a young poet/pizza delivery man lost in a derisory and mercantile society. Every day he delivers a pizza to an old poet – extraordinary Xavier Gallais! -. Certainly, we find there the insolence of Olivier Py (in a way The servant created in 1995), its scope: in ten hours going beyond its era, interacting with other places, other times and other authors such as Rimbaud, Shakespeare, Molière or Plato. But also and above all, we find there his sincere ambition to question the future of the artist (Arlequino, Alcandre), the theater (the play is being developed before our eyes), politics (The Minister, the adviser and behind the scenes) , religion (the bishop, Sister Victoire, Jesus), love, poetry, which combines with each other, gives rise to an overflowing initiatory fable on the lies and sometimes shameful little arrangements of power and ambition .
As always with Olivier Py, everything goes through the frantic pace, the mobile scenography, the colorfulness of the costume (special mention at the Costume Workshops of the Théâtre de Liège), the sense of the derisory, between monumental work and miniature cosmogony. Corn My exalted youth adds a disturbing dimension to his approach to derision: tenderness. Perhaps to better remove the simulacra. Unless it is the deep artistic mystery that binds the author and director to the characters of Arlequino and Alcandre: a strange effect of filial recognition. Choose a son and then recognize yourself as a father? No matter the effects.
It is not insignificant that Olivier Py chose today to draw the portrait of an indomitable youth because he obliges him to return the costume of the artist to be in a more egalitarian and welcoming relationship “something that comes” after having been for 9 + 1 years the director of the biggest festival in the world. Let him move on to what he wants!
Ma jeunesse exaltée is published by Actes Sud.
After the festival: 11, 12, 18 and 19 November 23, Nanterre-Amandiers Theater; 25 and 26 November 23, Théâtre National Populaire, Villeurbanne.
Visual Anima Noémie Goudal and Maëlle Poesy / © Christophe Raynaud de Lage / Avignon Festival.
All the articles of the editorial staff in Avignon can be found here.