BAMbill

CROWD

DATE:
Oct 13—15, 2022

LOCATION:
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

RUN TIME:
90 min, no intermission

BAM in association with FIAF’s Crossing The Line Festival Presents

CROWD

Conception, choreography and scenography by Gisèle Vienne

Season Sponsor:

Leadership support for BAM Access Programs provided by the Jerome L. Greene Foundation

Leadership support for programming in the Howard Gilman Opera House provided by:

Leadership support for dance at BAM provided by The SHS Foundation

Leadership support for dance at BAM provided by:

Leadership support for CROWD provided by 

Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels: 

Additional support provided by FUSED, a program of Villa Albertine and FACE Foundation

CROWD

Conception, choreography and scenography Gisèle Vienne

Assisted by Anja Röttgerkamp and Nuria Guiu Sagarra

Lights Patrick Riou

Dramaturgy Gisèle Vienne and Denis Cooper


Music selections from Underground Resistance, KTL, Vapour Space, DJ Rolando, Drexciya, The Martian, Choice, Jeff Mills, Peter Rehberg, Manuel Göttsching, Sun Electric and Global Communication

Edits, playlist selection Peter Rehberg

Sound diffusion supervisor Stephen O’Malley


Performers Lucas Bassereau, Philip Berlin, Marine Chesnais, Sylvain Decloitre, Sophie Demeyer, Vincent Dupuy, Massimo Fusco, Rehin Hollant, Oskar Landström, Theo Livesey, Maya Masse, Katia Petrowick, Linn Ragnarsson, Jonathan Schatz, and Henrietta Wallberg


Costumes Gisèle Vienne in collaboration with Camille Queval and the performers

Sound engineer Adrien Michel

Technical manager Erik Houllier

Stage manager Antoine Hordé

Light manager Samuel Dosière


Special thanks Louise Bentkowski, Dominique Brun, Zac Farley, Uta Gebert, Etienne Hunsinger, Margret Sara Guðjónsdóttir, Isabelle Piechaczyk, Richard Pierre, Arco Renz, Jean-Paul Vienne and Dorothéa Vienne-Pollak.



Detailed music credits

Track selections in order of appearance :


Underground Resistance: The Illuminator (Underground Resistance, 1995)

KTL: Lampshade (exclusive, 2017)

Vapour Space: Gravitational Arch Of 10 (Plus 8, 1993)

DJ Rolando: Vibrations mix (Underground Resistance, 2002)

- Underground Resistance: Sweat Electric (Somewhere In Detroit, 1994)

- Underground Resistance: Twista (Underground Resistance, 1993)

- Drexciya: Wavejumper (Underground Resistance, 1995)

- The Martian: The Intruder (Red Planet, 1992)

- Underground Resistance: Code Red (Underground Resistance, 1993)

- Underground Resistance: Lunar Rhythms (Somewhere In Detroit, 1995)

- Underground Resistance: Hi-Tech Funk (Underground Resistance, 1997) Choice: Acid Eiffel (Fragile Records, 1992)

Jeff Mills: Phase 4 (Tresor/Axis, 1992)

Peter Rehberg: Furgen Matrix/Telegene (exclusive, 2017)

Manuel Göttsching: E2-E4 (Inteam, 1984)

Sun Electric: Sarotti (R&S Records, 1993)

Global Communication: 14 31 (Ob-selon Mi-Nos) (Evolution, 1994)



Production & touring Alma Office, Anne-Lise Gobin, Camille Queval & Andrea Kerr // administration Cloé Haas & Giovanna Rua


Producer: DACM / Company Gisèle Vienne

Coproducers : Nanterre-Amandiers, centre dramatique national / Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg - Scène européenne / Wiener Festwochen / manège, scène nationale - reims / Théâtre national de Bretagne / Centre Dramatique National Orléans/Loiret/Centre / La Filature, Scène nationale - Mulhouse / BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen. Support: CCN2 – Centre Chorégraphique national de Grenoble / CND Centre national de la danse



Premiere November 8, 9 & 10th 2017 at Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg – Scène européenne in partnership with POLE-SUD, CDCN Strasbourg

The Company Gisèle Vienne is supported by Ministère de la culture et de la communication – DRAC Grand Est, la Région Grand Est and Ville de Strasbourg.


The company is supported by the Institut Français for international touring and by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.


Gisèle Vienne is an associated artist at the CND Centre national de la danse and at the Théâtre National de Bretagne. As from January 2023 Gisèle Vienne will be associated artist at MC2 : Grenoble.

About the Artists

CONCEPTION


Gisèle Vienne is a franco-austrian artist, choreographer and director. After graduating in Philosophy, she studied at the puppeteering school Ecole Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette. She works regularly with, among others, the writer Dennis Cooper.


Over the past 20 years, her work has been touring in Europe and regularly performed in Asia and in America, among which, I Apologize (2004), Kindertotenlieder (2007), Jerk (2008), This is how you will disappear (2010), LAST SPRING: A Prequel (2011), The Ventriloquists Convention (2015) in collaboration with Puppentheater Halle and Crowd (2017). In 2020, she created with Etienne Bideau-Rey a fourth version of Showroomdummies at the Rohm Theater Kyoto, originally created in 2001. In 2021, she made the film Jerk and created L’Etang, a show based Robert Walser’s short story Der Teich.


Gisèle Vienne has frequently been exhibiting her photographs and installations in museums among which the New York Whitney Museum, the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. She published two books : JERK / Through Their Tears with Dennis Cooper, Peter Rehberg and Jonathan Capdevielle in 2011 and 40 PORTRAITS 2003-2008, in collaboration with Dennis Cooper and Pierre Dourthe in 2012. Her work has led to various publications and the original music of her shows to several albums.



PERFORMERS


Massimo Fusco

Born in 1986, living in France. Massimo Fusco studied contemporary dance at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse of Paris. As a dancer, he collaborated with Jean-Claude Gallotta, Annabelle Bonnéry & François Deneulin, Hervé Robbe, Sarah Crépin & Etienne Cuppens, Joanne Leighton, Clédat & Petitpierre, Alban Richard, Mélanie Perrier, Christian Rizzo, Dominique Brun, and Gisèle Vienne with whom he performed all around the world. He danced in the movie Le Bal des actrices directed by Maïwenn, and he is one of the characters of If it were love directed by Patric Chiha, Teddy Award-winning at the Berlinale 2020. As a teacher, he is invited to give workshops and professional trainings for dancers at the Ballet Preljocaj, at the Ballet National of Marseille / (LA)HORDE, at the DCA company / Philippe Decouflé, at the Montpellier Danse festival and at the Centre National de la Danse. He developed workshops for more than ten years in France and in Europe in various contexts especially for medico-social structures in which research and experimentation are subjects of special attention. As a choreographer, he is interested in performance art, and he completed a university degree of art, dance and performance art. Since then, he uses improvisation’s skills as a motor for creativity and composition in order to create more transversality between Arts. Certified as a Tui Na massage practitioner, he sets out to connect danse and somatic methods in an immersive sound installation: CORPS SONORES.


Vincent Dupuy

Sports were a big part of Vincent Dupuy's childhood including 10 years of artistic gymnastics and later on dance classes. In 2013, he joined the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris and met many different artists. He trained there as a contemporary dancer from 16 to 19 and obtained his DNSPD (Professional National Diploma of Dance Performer). When he finished, he became the 2016 winner of ADAMI Talents and participated in the revival of ‘May B’, with the Compagnie Maguy Marin. For the past five years, Vincent has been Director and Choreographer of the Arthésic Company—a young theatre collective—leading four creations in collaboration with Matthieu Carrani: an adaptation of Manque by Sarah Kane (2017), original creation Asile (2018), Charlie (2019) and an adaptation of Bleu de Thury by Malika Bey Durif (2020). Since 2017, Vincent has been performing in A New Landscape by Hervé Robbe, in Catherine Legrand's re-creation of Dominique Bagouet’s So Schnell and in CROWD and Kindertotenlieder by Gisèle Vienne. In September 2021 he founded the Cie Atlas to develop his own choreographic work and his first creation Infra (2024). 


Henrietta Wallberg

Henrietta Wallberg, born in 1990 in Göteborg, Sweden, is a dancer, performance artist and actress, working in Sweden, Denmark and France. Since 2009, she has worked within a wide spectrum of the international art scene, moving between dancing, singing and acting on stage. Henrietta has performed within diverse artistic expressions such as 1800th century opera, as well as avant garde performance art in Stockholm. Over the years, Henrietta has continuously collaborated with the Swedish choreographer and director Charlotte Engelkes, member of Sasha Waltz and Guests. Together, they have dug into the world of Wagner and created the multi-disciplinary performances Flying Dutchmen and Lohengrin Dreams, which they performed at Radialsystem V, Berlin, and Helsingborgs stadsteater, Helsingborg. 


Henrietta has performed on stages such as Stockholms Stadsteater, Norrlands Operan in Umeå, Centre Pompidou in Paris, ROHM Theatre in Kyoto, Guangzhou Opera House in Canton and Sadler’s Wells in London. Since 2016, Henrietta has been part of the Compagnie Gisèle Vienne. Starting in 2017, Henrietta has toured with the performances CROWD and The Ventriloquists Convention in Europe, Asia and South America. As of 2022, Henrietta is also touring the theatre piece L’Etang, based on the novel Der Teich, by the Swiss author Robert Walser, and directed by Vienne. Henrietta is educated at The Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm, and graduated from there in 2009.


Oskar Landström

Oskar Landström is based in Stockholm and has been working as a freelancing dancer since 2009. He has worked with choreographers such as Cristina Caprioli, Björn Säfsten, Sebastian Matthias, Malin Elgán, Mia Habib, Ingri Fiksdal and Anne Imhof. Oskar premiered his first creation with Gisèle Vienne in 2017 with the production CROWD.


Philip Berlin

Philip Berlin was born in 1991, he works as a freelancer in the field of dance and choreography in Sweden and internationally. Philip has shown choreographic works at Théâtre de la Ville, Scenkonstmuseet, Dansens Hus, and in collaboration with Lousie Dahl, at Moderna Museet and MDT in Stockholm. Since 2013 Philip has collaborated regularly with Cristina Caprioli. In 2014 Philip initiated together with Ulrika Berg, Anna Grip, and Cristina Caprioli the project SUNDAY RUN UP—a context that brings together artists working in literature, choreography, music, and art. Philip has worked with CCN Ballet de Lorraine in France where he danced in works by Merce Cunningham, Mathilde Monnier, William Forsythe, Tero Saarinen,and Maria La Ribot, among others. He has also worked with companies such as Norrdans and Cullbergbaletten/Riksteatern. Since 2016, he has regularly taught at the Stockholm School of the Arts.


Sophie Demeyer

Sophie Demeyer lives and works in Paris. She began her training at Montpellier CNR, continued her studies in Angers at Centre National De la Danse. Since 2006, she worked with Annie Vigier & Franck apertet (Cie les gens d'uterpan), Thibaud Croisy, Julien Prévieux, Geisha Fontaine et Pierre Cottreau, and more recently Mathilde Monnier cie. She met and started working with Gisele in 2016. She also works as a comedian in the short and feature films of the directors Lora Mure Ravaud, Patric Chiha, River, Damien Manivel, Georgia Azoulay…


Katia Petrowick

Born in 1986, Katia Petrowick is a French artist. She trained in dance at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Danse de Paris from 2001 to 2006, in clowning at the Centre National des Arts du Cirque from 2008 to 2009 and is a graduate of the Somatic Movement Education course (Body-Mind Centering®). Since May 2009, she has been a choreographer and performer for the company L'Embellie Musculaire, in which she presents the young audience creations CoNg COng coNG, PULL OVER and JOGGING. Since 2007, she has also worked as a performer and/or assistant with choreographers and directors: Marilèn Breuker, Stéphanie Chêne, Eric Senen, Dominique Boivin and Dominique Rebaud, Luc Petton, Kataline Patkai, Stéphanie Constantin, Estelle Clareton, Bérénice Legrand, Clémentine Vanlerberghe, Elodie Sicard, Louise Vanneste. In 2015, she joined the Gisèle Vienne company for the recreation of I Apologize, Kindertotenlieder and the creation CROWD.


Marine Chesnais

Born in 1988, she lives in Groix, an island in Brittany. Passionated by the sea and our relationship with nature she created the company ONE BREATH in 2017 and developed the notion of bio-inspired dance. Her latest choreographic piece Habiter Le Seuil is currently touring in France and abroad. The movie of the same name accompanying the performance was selected in various international cinema festivals. The premiere was in April 2022 at the festival HOTDOCS in Toronto, Canada. As a performer she has collaborated with Gisèle Vienne since 2016.


Sylvain Decloitre Né

After studying at the Paris Conservatoire, Sylvain Decloitre performed with various artists such as Olivier Dubois, Jean-Claude Gallotta, Gerard and Kelly, Nile Koetting, Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley… He started to collaborate with Gisèle Vienne by joining the team of the piece Kindertotenlieder in 2016 and continues with CROWD since 2017.


Jonathan Schatz

Jonathan Schatz is a dancer and choreographer, living in Brussels, born in France in 1984. After studying at the École de l'Opéra national de Paris, he studied at the CNSMD in Lyon, the CNDC in Angers and the Fondation Royaumont under the direction of Myriam Gourfink. Since 2009 he has been a performer with Gisèle Vienne and has worked with several choreographers, including Marianne Baillot, Thibaud le Maguer, Dominique Brun, Philippe Saire, Pierre Droulers,

Claudia Sorace and Riccardo Fazi. Since 2011, through his research into trance, ritual and perception, he has been developing a hybrid work at the edge of disciplines, in immersive devices bringing together and dialoguing various artistic media such as sculpture, experimental music and digital art. From 2016 onwards, he has been associated with Les Bains, laboratories for the exploration of the amplified hypnotic tool, conceived by Catherine Contour, and participates in some of the creations resulting from this research, such as Suites Japonaises, une plage en Chartreuse in June 2019. Today he is starting Kodama, a research/creation project resulting from the laboratory initiated by Catherine Contour on the use of the hypnotic tool for creation. He is performing in CROWD, This is how you will disappear and Kindertotenlieder by Gisèle Vienne.


Theo Livesey

Theo Livesey, (°1995), is a performer and maker working in dance, theatre, and the written word. Since graduating from P.A.R.T.S. in 2016, he has been working closely with Gisèle Vienne as a performer and assistant in multiple works. He has been constructing his own work on stage and on the page, as well as engaging in various collaborative working processes with; Christine De Smedt and Liza Baliasnaja, Luka Svajda, Mario Barrantes Espinoza, and others.


Rehin Hollant 

After graduating in theater and dance studies Rehin graduated from the CNDC in Angers in 2013, under the direction of Emmanuelle Huynh. There she studied the works of Trisha Brown, Kô Murobushi, Trajal Harrel, Lia Rodrigues, Julie Nioche etc. She dances for Danyan Hammoud who created for her the solo 14 tours at the Ballet du Nord. Since 2017 she has been touring with CROWD by Gisèle Vienne. She joined various works by Amélie Poirier for Les Nouveaux Ballets, the Brussels-based company Droit dans le mur with Lurent Plumhans, and recently the company Nour in Nantes. She reconnected with acting by shooting in If it were love directed by Patric Chiha, Un homme Heureux directed by Tristan Séguéla and for Ruben Alves in Escort Boys. She defines herself as an actress, dancer and performer across disciplines.


Maya Masse

Maya Masse, dancer born in 1990, worked as a performer for Akram Khan (London Olympic Games opening), Raphaelle Boitel (Mac Beth, L’oubliée), Karim Bel Kacem & Maud Blandel (Cheerleader), Liz Santoro & Pierre Godard (Maps), Lisbeth Gruwez (The sea within), Emilie Pitoiset (Where did our love go), Cindy Van Acker (Shadow piece IV, Without references), Christian Rizzo (Le syndrome Ian, HB5, Une maison), Maud Blandel (Touch Down, Lignes de conduite, Diverti menti, Double septet, Bang Bang) and Gisele Vienne (CROWD), and has created and performed bullet time with Louis Schild and Wrestler.


Lucas Bassereau

Lucas Bassereau started his training at the Paris’ Conservatory, and from 2013 to 2015 joined the Training Cycle of P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels) He began to dance in the works of Noé Soulier, first as a replacement in Removing and Faits et Gestes, and then took part in his latest creations The Waves (2016) and First Memory (2022). With Noé Soulier he also worked on the film Fragments (2021), produced by the CNDC Angers. Lucas collaborated with Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard for the Creation of MAPS (2017) and with them took part in the LEARNING project at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at the National Gallery of Singapore. In 2019 he joined the team of CROWD by Gisele Vienne. In 2020, he collaborated with Sylvain Huc for his piece NUIT. Alongside this, Lucas leads workshops for both amateurs and future professionals in an array of establishments (CCN Orleans, CDCN Toulouse-Occitanie, CNDC Angers, CNSMDP, Schools etc...). In 2019, with Constance Diard, he created the platform Cognitive Overload and together are developing a number of projects. 2023 will see the premiere of two pieces: Big Bang at the Manège, National Scene de Reims, and Ambiance, created in-situ, at the Villa Cavrois, Croix.


Linn Ragnarsson

Linn Ragnarsson has been freelancing within the field of dance and choreography since 2009 and is based in Stockholm. Linn has worked with choreographers such as Mia Habib, Hagar Malin Hellqvist Sellén, Guilherme Bothelo & Cie Alias, Nicole Neidert, Malin Elgán, Lena Josefsson & Kompani Raande-Vo, Claire Parsons Co, Khosro Adibi, Judith Sanchez Ruiz, David Zambrano and Gisèle Vienne.

Interview by David Sanson for the Festival d’Automne à Paris 2017

With Crowd, you are continuing your examination of our fantasmatic universe and the relationship between art and the sacred, something that has characterized your productions from the very beginning. However, isn’t this the first time that you are dealing with this subject in its collective dimension, and with such a large number of performers?


Up until The Pyre (2013) my pieces, regardless of the number of performers, have largely been about private space and superimposed intimacies through persons who are often rather isolated. Now, after The Ventriloquists Convention (2015), this is the second time that I’m depicting a group whose social activity and interactions play a central role. This group is certainly very different from that of the ventriloquists’ convention, since it’s a group of young people who have come together out of a desire for feelings of euphoria and out of a common interest in a musical genre, techno. The context chosen is that of a party. The staging of the group fits in nicely with the question of intimacy and its relation to the group, and the relationship between individual and collective emotions.


From the very beginning I’ve been interested in questions raised by sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers on the relationship between the artistic and the religious and especially those thoughts and emotions which are improper, of their spaces of expression – archaic and contemporary, actual and potential. Whether it be eroticism, death, or violence, for example, these are issues that concern each of us and can disturb us, and might even jeopardize the community, depending on the way in which they are experienced.


With Crowd, there are often exhilarating aspects and outlets of expression of intensified emotions that develop through desire and the complex longing for love. The persons who go to this party, and thus form a community, are prepared to experience particularly intense emotions of any kind, and reach a state where their senses are already very much heightened. The group becomes excited by a piece where the structure and certain behaviors evoke various rituals. In the face of this emotional rollercoaster, the audience can likewise enter into a physical and emotional rapport with the piece.


What kind of place does music have in this work?


Peter Rehberg, who possesses an excellent knowledge of electronic music, proposed a number of tracks and on the basis of those I arrived at a selection for Crowd. He then did detailed work for the final mix.


I find it interesting that this selection in fact has a genuine historical relevance, since it’s made up of records that are important for the history of electronic dance music – works by musicians that are significant for the Detroit scene, among others, with Jeff Mills and other people from Underground Resistance, plus Manuel Göttsching, for example. The aim was to create a mix that covers an entire range of essential sounds that has been exciting for us over the last forty years.


Besides these tracks, which are used over the greater part of the production, there’s also an original piece composed by KTL (Stephen O’Malley and Peter Rehberg) and another by Peter Rehberg on his own.


And what is the role of Dennis Cooper’s text? You yourself have talked of a “subtext”…


The pieces – as is the world itself – are made up of different layers of texts, though not entirely. Language is not located solely in the realm of audibility. In Jerk (2008) the actor speaks throughout the entire play; with I Apologize (2004) very similar issues arise, although the same actor does not say a single word from the beginning to the very end. What Dennis Cooper and I have been passionate about, right from the start of our long collaboration, is the attempt with each project to reinvent new relationships to the text, to language, to speech, and to narration, and new ways of writing for the stage.


The “subtext” of Crowd is a text that is not audible but is partly intelligible. In Crowd, the fifteen dancers also constitute individual personae whose psychologies, imaginations, feelings, and histories are in each case very different. When you’re observing a party, there’s a huge number of “stories” that are unfolding right before your eyes; in Crowd there are histories

and portraits of persons that Dennis has developed based on work done with the actors, which refines and influences the creation of the piece. This aspect of the piece brings to mind the process of mixing in music. It involves a mixing of narrations, as though you have fifteen different music tracks and you’re adjusting their respective volume levels, and thus a composition that allows the audience to have a key role in the way in which they will see and experience the piece.


This dissociation of the various planes – dream vs. reality, real vs. fantasy – that produces a feeling of time distortion is another characteristic of your work.


Crowd has a very rich formal potential. One of the central components of this type of piece occurs by way of the multiple stylization of the movements and their montage. This is not an imitation of the movements reworked, but a very intimate interpretation guided by the emotions and the intentions that can motivate the performers, their attentiveness, and their greater reception of what is unfolding around them. I likewise work with subdivisions – at certain points the dancers are going to all be in the same type of stylization, a common language, and at others they will be in a different type of gesture. This creates a very rich range of rhythmical and musical vibrations resulting in a slightly altered perception that is somewhat reminiscent of a hallucinatory or hypnotic feeling, and still producing meaning. In fact, this musical and choreographic work itself allows a narrative work to be created. This play of rhythms provokes a very strong feeling of time distortion. These distortions are highly dynamic, while simultaneously stretching time, making it possible to observe the persons and situations from close-up, and to dissect their actions in detail. Various temporalities are superimposed, through the same movements, but also in their relationship to the music and lighting, whose relationship to time varies almost constantly.

Gisèle Vienne: Disturbance in Representation

By Bernard Vouilloux

The French-Austrian artist Gisèle Vienne (b. 1976) has made the stage her primary artistic material. Deceptively theatrical, her pieces function as tableaux or cinematic shots, hybrid representations of what is inexpressible in human relations. An analysis by Bernard Vouilloux, professor of literature and the visual arts at the Sorbonne.


For over a decade, beginning in 2000 with Jean Genet’s Splendid’s, Gisèle Viennehas been building up a fascinating body of work, piece by piece, that is both spellbinding and disturbing. It captivates us for the very reason that it forces us to examine the unclear connection that we maintain with both our fantasies and with the dark part made up of manipulation, domination, and violence that forms interpersonal relationships. To advance along this perilous course, Gisèle Vienne – who sees herself as choreographer, puppeteer, director and visual artist all at once – uses these means of representation as her medium. Whileshe has recently appropriated the more or less defined working methods of the art installation (“Last Spring: A Prequel”, at the 2012 Whitney Biennial in New York), exhibition (“Teenage Hallucination”, as part of the Nouveau Festival at the PompidouCentre in 2012), and even the book (40 Portraits, 2003-2008, published in 2012 by Éditions P.O.L), the venue and format to which she has usually devoted herself since her debut are those of the performing arts.


Althoughvery little is verbalized, works such as Kindertotenlieder (2007) and This Is How You Will Disappear (2010) are built on the intricate librettos created by Dennis Cooper, the American writer whom Gisèle Vienne has collaborated with since I Apologize (2004). The “action” of these underlying stories, far from yielding an unequivocal version, makes available all potentialities. What we are shown seems to conform to rules or laws whose sense eludes us. The subject matter on which each of Gisèle Vienne’s productions has been constructed is not unlike what anthropology designates as “myth”, that unrecoverable narrative whose inscrutable – and even contradictory – variations sustain rituals.


With few exceptions, notably Une belle enfant blonde (2005) and Jerk (2008), the “theatre” of Gisèle Vienne is a laconic one: the spoken word does not really exist there; to the extent that it does occur, it does so in the minimal form of monologue, often murmured, addressed to oneself or to someone who cannot hear, one who is absent or deceased. Jerk suggests what would be spoken in Vienne’s other shows if it were to be uttered; and at the same time, because it is a narrative, performed by a psychopathic narrator, and containing dialogues (entirely carried off by the impressive Jonathan Capdevielle), the spoken word of Jerk provides access to the underlying framework of the productions conceived by Gisèle Vienne based on the written texts of Dennis Cooper. One should imagine all of Dennis Cooper’s sources of inspiration, from another continent and another culture, when he tells stories of beautiful, ambiguous teens brutally tortured, young women manipulated, lovers gone missing, as though commissioned by Sade and Sacher-Masoch (invoked in Showroomdummies, 2001-2009), revised by Genet and Bataille, and then reworked by the Robbe-Grillets with, on the horizon, “Freudian psychology in the light of postmodernism” as specifies narrator of Jerk.


Writing that feeds from images of all sorts is itself a powerful trigger of images, whether it be those that develop on the stage or those that the spectator imagines or recombines from what s/he sees and hears, or even from what s/he reads (e.g. the fanzines distributed to the audience at the beginning of Jerk, 2008, or at the end of The Pyre, 2013). In the work of Gisèle Vienne, however, the image on stage is unique in that it is mobile, its plastic qualities have been highly elaborated, and it is coupled to an almost uninterrupted flow of music (by the duo of KTL). Neither opera nor filmed theatre, but rather dream images, images from silent film, and accompanied by music and spoken word as if from off-stage, from “another scene” (Freud), as it were … The “theatre” of Gisèle Vienne primarily deals with all that is neither looked at nor listened to, the silent images that haunt us, flooding back onto the stage.


Gisèle Vienne as well as subsequent critical comment on her workhave often cited the genre of tableau vivant: onlookers (you, me) assume the poses, the postures, and sometimes the costumes of the painted figures of a familiar scene. Except that there is no original tableau that this can be traced back to, one whose recognition would reassure us. The actors themselves play along, their displacements having the effect of saturating the performance space, of mobilizing all of its dimensions, by a rigorously constructed total environment. All of the body’s speeds are utilized: quick staccato dance (in The Pyre), quasi-gymnastics (in This Is How You Will Disappear), displacements that are fast, slow, or broken down.


But “actor” and “performer” are words that in this case are ill-suited – and not only because most of the figures activate the resources of choreography. In Jerk, the mechanism of representation is reduced to its most minimal state: it is enough that the body of the narrator-puppeteer is doubled, that the mute voice that is designated “subject” is bifurcated and reflected off itself. The puppets are the projections of this process of fission. Gisèle Vienne herself has touched on this in her account of how in sixth grade she began to create marionettes and perform with them. The puppets and mannequins point to a more advanced stage of this process: on the set of Kindertotenlieder, the ten motionless silhouettes, with hoods pulled up over their hair, hair falling down over the face, and heads bowed down (a recurring motif, seen again in the series of 40 Portraits), seem to be those of the young audience at a black metal concert. The final stage is that of living persons who also wear masks. Don’t their gestures and movements sometimes seem to be mechanized, whereas, conversely, the animation of the puppets, and even of the mannequins, make them seem alive? The same disturbing thought troubles us when faced with the figures of a tableau vivant, or of wax: the most familiar becomes the most strange. Indeed, under the direction of Gisèle Vienne, there are neither actors or performers nor even people, but figures which are at the same time apparitions, geometrical forms, and rhetorical operations tuned in to the Unconscious. The generalized uncertainty plays on this stage set of simulacra.


The fantasy material set into motion by Gisèle Vienne as by Dennis Cooper takes this uncertainty to a state of additional complexity: the ambiguity of age, between infancy, childhood, adolescence, and post-adolescence. It is also that of gender – for example the young androgynous boys of Jerk, in contrast to the powerfully sexual bodies of the female dancer and the trainer in This Is How You Will Disappear. But still more disturbing is the uncertainty of the subject itself, above all when it speaks as in Jerk or Last Spring: A Prequel. On this subject, reduced as we are to conjecture, we can only resort to projections.

Tour

Strasbourg (FR), Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg - Scène européenne in partnership with POLE-SUD, CDCN Strasbourg, November 8,9 &10, 2017 / Reims (FR), Manège Scène nationale de Reims, November 15, 2017 / Kortrijk (BE) Next Festival, November 25, 2017 / Nanterre (FR), Nanterre-Amandiers, centre dramatique national with the Festival d’Automne à Paris, December 7 to 16, 2017 / Brussels (BE), Kaaitheater, January 26 & 27, 2018 / Rennes (FR), Théâtre national de Bretagne, Rennes, February 6, 7, 8 & 9, 2018 / Grenoble (FR), MC2, February 27 & 28, 2018 / Mulhouse (FR), La Filature, Scène nationale, May 29, 2018 / Vienna (AT), Wiener Festwochen, May 31 & June 1, 2, 2018 / Berlin (DE), Volksbühne, June 13, 14 & 15, 2018 / Amsterdam (NL), Holland Festival, June 27 & 28, 2018 / Madrid (ES), Naves Matadero, July 6 & 7, 2018 / Venice (IT), Biennale di Venezia, July 30, 2018 / Hamburg (DE), Kampnagel, August 10, 11 & 12, 2018 / Zurich (CH), Theater Spektakel, August 25 & 26, 2018 / Lausanne (CH), Théâtre Vidy Lausanne, September 27, 28 & 29, 2018 / Kyoto (JP), Kyoto Experiment, October 6 & 7, 2018 / Bergen (NO), Bit teatergarasjen, October 26 & 27, 2018 / Utrecht (NL), SPRING in Autumn, November 1, 2018 / Cergy (FR), L’Apostrophe – Scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise, November 9, 2018 / Athens (GR), Onassis Cultural Center, November 17 & 18, 2018 / Lisboa (PT), Culturgest, December 8 & 9, 2018 / Poitiers (FR), TAP, January 24, 2019 / Sevilla (ES), Teatro Central, March 8 & 9, 2019 / Oslo (NO), Black Box festival & Dansens Hus, March 15 & 16, 2019 / Forbach (FR), Le Carreau – Scène Nationale de Forbach et de l’Est mosellan, April 4, 2019 / Nantes (FR), Lieu Unique, April 23 & 24, 2019 / Düsseldorf (DE), Tanzhaus, April 26 & 27, 2019 / Frankfurt (DE), Mousonturm, May 2 & 3, 2019 / Munich (DE), Dance Festival, May 23 & 24, 2019 / Singapore (SG), Singapore International Festival of Arts, June 1 & 2, 2019 / Dro (IT), Festival Drodesera, July 27, 2019 / Helsinki (FI), Helsinki Festival, August 29, 30 & 31, 2019 / Paris (FR), Centre Pompidou with the Festival d’Automne à Paris, September 25, 26, 27 & 28, 2019 / London (GB), Sadler’s Wells, October 8 & 9, 2019 / Glasgow (GB), Tramway, October 16, 2019 / Stockholm (SE), Dansnätsverige, November 20 & 21, 2019 / Martigues (FR), Les Salins, Scène nationale de Martigues, December 13, 2019 / Mende (FR), Théâtre de Mende, December 15, 2019 / Foix (FR), L’Estive, Scène nationale de Foix et de l’Ariège, January 29, 2020 / Toulouse (FR), Théâtre de la Cité, January 31 & February 1, 2020 / Sao Paulo (BR), MITsp, March 5, 6 & 7, 2020 / Douai (FR), Tandem Scène nationale, October 14, 2020 / Geneva (CH), Comédie de Genève, November 11, 12 & 13, 2021 / Annecy (FR), Bonlieu Scène nationale, December 2 & 3, 2021 / Bobigny (FR) MC93, December 15, 16, 17 & 18, 2021 / Bordeaux (FR) La Manufacture & TnBA, January 19 & 20, 2022 / Dijon (FR) Le Dancing CDCN, April 2, 2022 / Charleroi (FR) Charleroi Danse, April 29 & 30, 2022 / Metz (FR) Passages Transfestival, May 11, 2022 / Dublin Theater Festival (IE) , October 7 & 8, 2022 / BAM New-York (US), October 13, 14 15, 2022 / Actoral & Usine C Montreal (CA), October 19 & 20, 2022 / Van Cleef & Arpeles & LADP Los Angeles (US), October 26 & 27, 2022 / Théâtre national de Nice (FR), March 10th & 11th, 2023 / Ollioules (FR) Châteauvallon Liberté, March 14, 2023 / Barcelona Teatre Mercat de les Flors (ES), March 17, 18 & 19, 2023 / Comédie de Saint-Etienne (FR), March 22 & 23 2023 / Opéra de Lille (FR), June 6 & 7, 2023