Time has passed and even if Alegria does not capture the in depth artistry brought about by memory, desire and all that swirls in a mind returning to its past inspired by Fellini’s cinema that made Corteo so special (see below******), Alegría, created in 1994, did define a brand new circus aesthetic that has grown with the company, especially since its work in Las Vegas. …
Une des qualités du festival d’Almada, et non des moindres, est de faire se rencontrer, sans avoir aucunement à craindre la comparaison, le théâtre lusophone dans sa contemporanéité et les théâtres différents venus d’autres pays, théâtres émergés d’autres continents, certains nous disant être pour la première fois invités hors de leur pays d’origine. Ainsi la proposition « Do que é que somos feitos ?!, De quoi sommes-nous faits ?! », nous est offerte par la « Compagnie 1ER Temps » originaire de Dakar et jointe à la « Compagnie ABC » de Paris. Une création riche de sens, et qui comme tout bon spectacle, ne se donne pas dans l’instant à comprendre tout entière.
La danseuse Clarisse Sagna, le guitariste Press Mayindou, l’écrivain et pédagogue Kouam Tawa, le danseur chorégraphe Andréya Ouamba composent, sur la mise en scène de Catherine Boskowitz, une sorte d’opéra-rock baroque et déjanté pour nous parler de choses graves et sérieuses, du Congo ou du Sénégal, pour nous dire l’Afrique comme elle va, nous dire aussi le monde dans toutes ses blessures mal cicatrisées comme dans ses problèmes actuels, montée des extrêmes-droites, émergence de nouveaux dictateurs, obéissance aveugle des peuples… …
— Par Janine Bailly —
Le festival d’Almada ne se limite pas à une forme de spectacle, mais se déploie de la performance exceptionnelle abondamment commentée et saluée d’Isabelle Huppert, dans Mary disse o que disse, jusqu’à des créations plus intimes, pièces sans afféteries, sans déploiements excessifs de décors ni vidéos projetées, mais extrêmement belles, nécessaires et touchantes dans leur volontaire dénuement.
Qui ne connaît, n’a lu, ou n’a eu écho du texte de Primo Levi intitulé « Si c’est un homme », « Se isto é um homem », « Se questo è un uomo ». Le titre de l’ouvrage est extrait du poème Shema, écrit sur une plaque commémorative à Livourne, et qui appelle à la transmission, aux générations futures, de la mémoire de l’holocauste. Témoignage autobiographique, essentiel à notre époque de recrudescence en certains pays de mouvements fascistes ou antisémites ou d’extrême-droite, le livre est considéré comme un des plus importants du vingtième siècle. L’auteur se souvient, suscite la mémoire vive de son internement, parle de sa survie dans le camp d’extermination d’Auschwitz, où il fut déporté et détenu de février 1944 jusqu’à la libération du camp en janvier 1945, après avoir été arrêté parce que membre de la résistance italienne au fascisme. …
Outwitting The Devil, Akram Khan’s latest work, truly stood out within the line up of very diverse works featured at the 2019 Avignon Festival. Performed at the magnificent Cour d’honneur du Palais des Papes this work resonated the architectural grandeur of the space and echoed its spiritual splendour. It reflected the palace’s glory through its own choreography, mythic themes and hypnotic sound and lighting designs.
Akram Khan, a British dancer and choreographer of Bangladeshi descent, captivated the world of contemporary dance in the early 2000s. A student of the kathak, a traditional Indian dance, he performed in Peter Brook’s Mahâbhârata. Later he created highly experimental solo and ensemble work that would draw his viewers’ attention to the hybrid language of dance as invented by Khan himself, the language in which traditional elements of the Indian dance would neighbor and dialogue with many components of western performance. To enrich his vocabulary, Akram Khan engaged dramatic narrative and humor, approximating in his style the so-called tanz-teatr as developed by the German choreographer Pina Bausch. …
MAHMOUD & NINI is an unusual show –not only it does not look like your typical proscenium theatre, with elaborate plots and developed characters, colorful costumes and sets; it also reminds one of a lecture hall. Two people –Mahmoud: a Egyptian man, black, homosexual, speaking Arabic; and Nini: a French woman, white, with a shorthair and complex ancestry, speakingFrench–sit next to each other, facing audience. They use direct address to enumerate assumptions about each other and their cultures, all based on biases and stereotypes. It is unclear whether they’re seeking understanding or simply re-enforce what people of different backgrounds think of each other ; whether they want to show our ignorance and how dependent we can be on media discourses, or propose some kind of action or solution to these endless miscommunications that only breed fear and mistrust. …
LEBRUITDUOFF.COM – 20 juillet 2019
AVIGNON OFF 19. « Moi, fardeau inhérent » de Guy Régis Jr – mise en scène et interprétation : Daniély Francisque au Train Bleu du 5 au 24 juillet 2019 à 17h55 (relâches les11 et 18 juillet)
Entre théâtre et performance la metteuse en scène Daniély Francisque offre ici un spectacle dur et total. Elle, c’est cette femme qui attend dehors son bourreau, prête à rendre justice et qui lui vomit à sa fenêtre toute sa colère et celle de toutes les femmes du monde, opprimées, objets sexuels et esclaves, corps traités et maltraités comme de la viande que l’on vend, violées à tout âge pour casser et briser les corps et l’âme. Les mots de l’auteur Haïtien Guy Régis Jr sont forts, acides et âpres, ils raclent la gorge et la tension dans la salle est palpable. …
Provocation – artistic, political, personal – is the signature style of the Russian theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov, the creator of the performance OUTSIDE that had its world premier at Avignon 2019. It is Serebrennikov’s third production to be featured at the festival, and it is as provocative and personally urgent to the artist as his previous works were. Made without any financial support from the Russian government, as the director’s assistant Anna Shalashova said at the press-conference with the Avignon public on July 17, OUTSIDE was created with as much artistic and inner freedom as it was possible given Serebrinnikov’s current situation. …
In the narrative of history, the question “who is telling the story” is the most important one. HISTOIRE(S) DU THÉÂTRE II, created by the Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula, frames its chronicle from many perspectives and several temporal settings. It connects the history of Zaire under Mobutu’s dictatorship with the story of the glory and the fall of its national symbol – the National Ballet of Zaire. Created in 1974, the company served as an export image of a new Zaire, touring the world with its iconic production L’Épopée de Lianja. However, with the changes in the country’s politics and economics, the company, together with Zaire’s people, started to experience financial drawbacks, with its latest production dating back to the 1980s. Some of the performers, who joined the company yet in 1974, are still there, although many of them have either left or passed away. …
Le reste vous le connaissez par le cinéma written by Martin Crimp, translated by Philippe Djian and directed by Daniel Jeanneteau, is among the most politically urgent works in the Avignon 2019. Not only that it builds on the enigmatic and ever wise text of Martin Crimp, it also references the new realities of today’s France with its over-populated banlieues that drastically redraft the face of the country’s cities.
An adaption of Euripides’ tragedy The Phoenician Women that was itself a take on Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, Crimp transforms the old Greek story into a thesis play with the Chorus centre stage. In this version of Oedipus’ myth, Jocasta does not kill herself. Upon learning the truth of her son/husband, she lives to see his shame and her sons’ death. The play opens with Jocasta’s account of the past and a warning that the guilt of the parents does not simply go away. The blind Oedipus, locked up by his sons Eteocles and Polyneices, has cursed them for this deed. He declared that neither of them will rule the city without his brother. Now, Polyneices, who exiled himself to Argos and married a foreign woman, has returned to Thebes to claim his inheritance. Eteocles is of course not interested in sharing power. After a short mediation between the brothers organized by Jocasta, they resume the fight and kill each other. …