figures
de Caroline Breton & Charles Chemin
direction & lumières│Charles Chemin
vidéo│Clélia Schaeffer
création sonore│Dom Bouffard
régie lumières│Simon Gautier
stagiaire│Ysé Rouy-Giraud
jeu│Caroline Breton, Agathe Vidal et Olivier Muller
Première le 15 mars 2022
La Ménagerie de Verre, Paris
production │ groupe Karol Karol
coproduction │ Ménagerie de Verre, Paris
et le soutien de │ Fonds de dotation Porosus
Centre National de la Danse, Pantin
Dans les parages/La Friche, Marseille
durée │ 50 mns
dates
15, 16, 17 mars 2022
La Ménagerie de Verre, Paris
1er mars 2022
Scène nationale d'Orléans
24 mars 2022
Théâtre du Garde-Chasse, Les Lilas
Figures is a work in the form of a reflection on the art of portraiture, conducted by Caroline Breton and Charles Chemin as a continuation of their previous piece , I Hope , which was an assemblage of heterogeneous stage portraits. In Figures , the research is oriented towards the layers of memory present in the performer, how they
They coexist, clash, and interact with the present, which is already memory, especially in the radiant experience of interaction with the public. Breton and Chemin construct a sensitive machine. A closed world with multiple parameters, geometric and temporal, where the main given is that the interpreter is multiple.
© Clélia Schaeffer
“Figures”, the ultraviolet still lifes by Caroline Breton and Charles Chemin, opening the Strange Cargo
MARCH 16, 2022 | BY AMELIE BLAUSTEIN NIDDAM
Oh joy! After a cancelled edition in 2021, L'Etrange Cargo, the performance festival at the Ménagerie de Verre, is finally taking place in full force (or form?). For the opening, Caroline Breton and Charles Chemin transformed the pine forest into a fluorescent wonderland. Gentle, beautiful, enveloping, and undeniably… strange!
Building connections
We last saw Caroline celebrating Spring at the Pop Festival last December. From Natura Rerum It was already a flow where vegetation was central. For Figures, it appears backlit, behind a fluorescent yellow spiderweb. To be honest, we thought we had seen everything at the Ménagerie, this former garage that Marie-Thérèse Allier, still at the helm, transformed into dance studios and a performance venue in 1983.
And while we had seen Ivana Müller work with weaving before, it had never been done quite like this. In electric neon. At this point, Caroline Breton is merely a silhouette, and we glimpse a ballerina. A ballerina extracted from a tectonic party, and now she is weaving.
The southern light
A robotic little girl's voice says something like, "I grew up in the south, and I miss the light. I bought a lamp to find the southern light in Paris." And we quickly understand that the entire piece will lead us to rediscover this light. It's like science fiction, a world where it's over, the trees are dead, the light is dead. To remember that this happened, we have to recreate the sensation. Caroline Breton, now bathed in light and dressed all in pink, traces nine diagonals on outstretched legs, her arms pulling back. A single, simple choreographic phrase per line. It could be funny, given the dancer's appearance and attire, but it's quite the opposite. The feeling is one of contemporary sadness that makes you want to curl up on comfortable flooring. The music composed by Dom Bouffard is perfect. It blends electro and rock, once again, in an early 20th-century atmosphere. Charles Chemin, in charge of lighting and direction, asks us to look directly at the sun, but a sun that doesn't dazzle, a sun that fades on the sea, disappearing, leaving a red trace. Later, the trees will return to take root, trying to grow on the concrete floor of the Off-site Ménagerie, and that gives a little hope.
Figures offers a succession of superb images, each one a tempting subject to capture. Ultimately, this spectacle is a vanitas that places the beauty of our almost-submerged worlds not under glass, but on stage.
INTERVIEW WITH WILSON LE PERSONNIC published in MA CULTURE on 15/03/2022