Memento Mori

Zhenvilie, Paris, France

PERFORMANCE PHOTO AND VIDEO PRESS

WHEN:
November 25, 26 at 20.00

“Memento Mori” has no other subject than movement in itself. Or more precisely the moment which precedes movement. I mean the very start, the initial moment, just before any sign of something moving. One would listen; one would hear some deep remote rumbling rising, drawing near, and they would appear: naked. One would conjure up all the images one carries deep inside and which belong to each individual, but which also belong to the high Aurignacian or even to earlier times to a prelapsary world. Naked. Before the fall. Before the fault. Do the pictures on the cave walls dance? Do the hands on the cave walls dance? Yes indeed. They dance under the light. What is movement but substance changing from an former shape to a new one and light allows this transformation. Yes, light allows this when it enters into the cave. The obscure cave of the brain; disclosing primary forms of joy, of dazzling rapture, when the Dionysian world of fruit! Grapes! Bananas! Tomatoes and garden come out and join the bodies! Dionysius everywhere! …just before terror. Dead scared to be alive; or afraid of losing life. Before they start licking one another, again and again; all of them; licking every single part of their bodies clean. And licking, licking endlessly, licking clean, cleaning life, cleaning the pictures we have of ourselves.

Pascal Rambert (Paris, september 2011)

Conception, direction – Pascal Rambert

Artistic collaboration, stage device and light – Yves Godin

Original Music – Alexandre Meyer

With 5 performers – Elmer B?ck, Rasmus Slatis, Jakob Ohrman & Lorenzo De Angelis

Stage manager – Tristan Mengin

Production manager – Pauline Roussille

Production: Th??tre de Gennevilliers Centre Dramatique National de Cr?ation Contemporaine

Coproduction: CDC – Les Hivernales en Avignon

Th??tre de Gennevilliers is subsidized by the Cultural and Communication government department, the city of Gennevilliers and the Hauts-de-Seine general council.

Yves Godin, Artistic collaboration, stage device and light

Yves Godin collaborated as a stage-light creator to the projects of many choreographers in the early 90s (Herv? Robe, Georges Appaix, Fattoumi and Lamoureux), discovering thus a large field of aesthetic experiments. Then he worked with several musicians, visual artists and choreographers (particularly with Alain Chamard, Kasper Toeplitz, Rachid Oumradane, Julie Nioche, Emmanuelle Huynh, Boris Charmatz, Claude Wampler, Christian Sebille, Maria Donata d’Urso, Jennifer Lacey and Nadia Lauro, Alain Buffard, Vincent Dupont). He conceives the light as independent from dance music or text and yet as a suitable complementary element to the other elements of the scenic art. His two major work directions are the perception of space and time, weaving networks which can be more or less anachronistic with the other elements (bodies, sounds, thought, time). Today he collaborates essentially with Vincent Dupont and Boris Charmatz. Besides, Yves Godin created the lights for the “Legend“ exhibition in Domaine de Chamarande, for the opening of LIFE (ST Nazaire, 2008) with “life light”, as well as for the happening ?trangler le temps (strangle time), a prefiguration of the Mus?e de la danse , april 2009, with the light creation “fiat lux for a Volkswagen garage”. He also took part in the zero exhibition of the Mus?e de la danse in LIFE (ST Nazaire, 2009).

Since 2008 with “Point d’orgue”, a disposition for 1000candles, he has invited performers to visit his installation.

Alexandre Meyer, music

Born in 1962, he has been in many groups since 1982: Loupideloupe, Les Trois 8, Sentimental trios 8. He works with Marc Citti, Fred Costa, Fr?d?ric Mini?re, Xavier Garcia, Heiner Goebbels the stage directors Cl?mentine Baert, Maurice B?nichou, Patrick Bouchain, Robert Cantarella, V?ronique Caye, Jean-Paul Delore, Michel Deutsch, Nasser Djema?, Daniel Janneteau, Philippe Minyana, Pascal Rambert, Jacques Vincey, Marie-Christine Soma… the choreographers Odile Duboc, Fabrice Lambert, Mathilde Monnier, Julie Nioche, Rachid Ouramdane, the sculptor Daniel Buren.; the story- teller Muriel Bloch; and for France Culture with Blandine Masson and Jacques Taroni.

Pascal Rambert conception, direction

Director of the Th??tre de Gennevilliers since January 2007, Pascal Rambert was born in 1962. He began writing and directing his own work in 1982. In 1984, he created his company Side One Posthume Th??tre. From 2004 to 2006, he was associated artist at the Bonlieu-sc?ne nationale in Annecy.

In 2006, he was nominated director of the Th??tre de Gennevilliers, he was the first successor of founder, Bernard Sobel.

His texts published by Actes Sud-Papiers and Solitaires Intempestifs – directed by himself and other in France, Europe, the United States and Japan.

1984. D?sir et Les lits / Centre dramatique national de Nice (F)

1985. M?t?orologie / this text received le Prix sp?cial USA

1986. Allez Hop / Festival d’Et? de Seine Maritime de Rouen (F)

1987. Le r?veil / Centre national des ?critures du spectacle, La Chartreuse Villeneuve-L?s-Avignon (F)

1989. Les Parisiens / 43?me Festival d’Avignon (F)

1990–1991. research in the United States and the Middle East (USA)

1992. John & Mary / Th??tre des Amandiers-Nanterre (F)

1993. De mes propres mains / Th??tre des Amandiers-Nanterre (F)

1997. Long Island / La Cri?e-Th??tre national de Marseille (F)

1997. Race / Festival Octobre en Normandie, Th??tre G?rard Philippe-

Saint-Denis, Los Angeles with LAPD Theater Group (USA)

2000. L’?pop?e de Gilgamesh / Experimental Theater Wing New York University – 54?me Festival d’Avignon (F)

2001. Asservissement Sexuel Volontaire / Th??tre National de la Colline, Th??tre

des Salins-sc?ne nationale de Martigues, Bonlieu-sc?ne nationale d’Annecy (F)

2002–2003. Workshops and performances FSO (forms without ornament) which begin physical, oral and plastic workshops in real time / M?nagerie de verre, Parc de la Villette, Com?die de Caen, Les Subsistances-Lyon, Bonlieu-sc?ne nationale d’Annecy, mc2-Maison de la culture de Grenoble, Ballet Atlantique R?gine Chopinot-CCN La Rochelle (F)

2004. Paradis (un temps ? d?plier) / Th??tre National de la Colline (Paris, F), Com?die de Caen (F), Bonlieu-sc?ne nationale d’Annecy (F), festival de Sarrebruck (DE), Dance Theater Workshop New York (USA)

2004. Direction Philomela, Opera James Dillon / Teatro Rivoli Porto (PO), Od?on-Th??tre de l’Europe (F).

2005. Le d?but de l’A / Com?die Fran?aise (Paris, F)

2005. Pan / Opera Marc Monnet from the texts of Christophe Tarkos / production Op?ra national du Rhin de Strasbourg in coproduction with the Ircam (F)

2005. AFTER/BEFORE / 59?me Festival d’Avignon, Bonlieu-sc?ne nationale d’Annecy, Th??tre de Gennevilliers

2006. Un gar?on d?bout, choreography of Rachid Ouramdane preformed by Pascal Rambert / Bonlieu-sc?ne nationale d’Annecy (F), La M?nagerie de verre (Paris, F), CDC Toulouse (F), Festival d’Utrecht (NE).

2006. Mon Fant?me, show for young public / Bonlieu Sc?ne nationale d’Annecy (F)

2007. De mes propres mains (recr?ation) / Bonlieu-sc?ne Nationale d’Annecy (F)/ Th??tre des Salins-sc?ne nationale de Martigues (F), M?nagerie de Verre ? Paris (F)

2007. Le d?but de l’A, recreated inTokyo (Japan) in the Com?die-Fran?aise version, in japonese langage, with japonese performers / Th??tre de l’Agora-direction Oriza Hirata (Japan)

2007. Toute la vie / created at the T2G (F). Touring during the Printemps des arts festival in Monaco and at Bonlieu-sc?ne nationale d’Annecy (F) in april 2008.

2007. L’Art du th??tre with Lou Castel/created at the T2G (F)

2008. Libido Sciendi / created during the Montpellier Danse Festival (F) / La M?nagerie de Verre (Paris, F) / CDC de Toulouse (F) / CDC Aquitaine (F) / T2G (F) / Gr?tli theater in Geneva (CH)/ Ex Ponto Festival in Ljubljana (Slovenia) / MOT Festival in Skopje (Macedonia)

2008. Inferno of Dante / Gr?tli theater in Geneva (CH)

2009. Portrait/Portrait / conception and realisation Pascal Rambert and Rachid Ouramdane / T2G (F)

2009. Qu’est-ce que tu vois? / Text of Marie Jos? Mondzain / T2G (F) / La Force de l’Art 02 at the Grand-Palais, Paris (F)

2009. Armide / Lully’s opera, musical direction Antoine Plante /with the Mercury Baroque / Wortham Theater Opera Houston (USA)/ T2G (F)

2010. Une (micro) histoire ?conomique du monde, dans?e / created at the T2G (F) Fujimi Cultural Hall Kirari in Fujimi (Japan)/ in Shizuoka at SPAC-Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (Japan) / Miyasaki at Miyazaki Prefectural Art Center theater (Japan) / Le Ph?nix – Sc?ne nationale de Valenciennes (F) / Th??tre des Salins (F) / Sc?ne nationale de Cavaillon (F) / CDN Orl?ans (F)

2010. Knockin’ on heaven’s door / created in the frame of Extra 2010 festival at ADC Geneva (CH) / T2G (F)

2011. 16 ans / Th??tre de Gennevilliers/ Agora cit? de la danse de Montpellier for the Festival Hybrides / CDN d’Orl?ans / Pr?au, CDR de Vire for the Festival ADO

2011. Cl?ture de l’amour / This text received le Prix du Syndicat de la Critique 2012 « Meilleure cr?ation d’une pi?ce en langue fran?aise» and le Grand Prix de Litt?rature dramatique 2012

Festival d’Avignon / Th??tre de Gennevilliers / Gr?tli Gen?ve / / Teatro delle Passioni for festival Vie Scena Contemporanea / ZKM ? Zagreb for world theatre festival / Daehangro Arts Theater for Seoul Performing Arts Festival / Com?die Sc?ne nationale de Clermont Ferrand / Centre Pompidou (Paris) / BOZAR theatre et danse de Bruxelles / Th??tre de Ch?teauvallon / TAP ? Poitiers / TU ? Nantes / Grand R ? La Roche-sur-Yon / Nouveau Th??tre d’Angers – CDN Pays de la Loire / Th??tre du Nord ? Lille / Sc?ne Nationale de Martigues / Th??tre de la Manufacture, CDN de Nancy / Th??tre des C?lestins ? Lyon / L’espace Malraux Sc?ne Nationale de Chamb?ry et de la Savoie / Th??tre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Sc?ne nationale

Recreation of Cl?ture de l’Amour in Russian at Th??tre d’Art Anton Tchekhov de Moscou, 2012 / in croatian at ZKM – Zagreba?ko Kazali?te Mladih, 2012 / in English at Abrons Arts Center for Crossing the Line – French Institute Alliance Fran?aise (FIAF) festival, 2012 / in Italian at Teatro delle Passioni, 2012 / in Japanese at SPAC of Shizuoka, Osaka and Tokyo, 2013

2012. 50mn / performance created during the Hivernales festival – Avignon 2012 in march 12

2013. Memento Mori / creation during the Hivernales festival – Ved?ne / Man?ge de Mons for Focus th??tre/fr/ Th??tre de Gennevilliers / Th??tre Daniel Sorano ? Toulouse

He is also the director of several short films:

2009 – Premier anniversaire

25 mn – 35 mm

With Kate Moran, Lou Rambert-Preiss, Josette and Ren? Graner

chef op?rateur Caroline Champetier

Production : Les Films du Belier

With the support of France 2, and «aide aux programmes du CNC»

With the support of Conseil R?gional de Lorraine, the PROCIREP, the lANGOA-AGICOA. Festival de Locarno 2009

Selected at Festival international du film de Locarno – International Short Film Festival Leuven 2009

2007 – Avant que tu reviennes

30min – 35mm

Photography: S?bastien Buchman

Production: Les Films du belier (F), with the support of “aide au programme du CNC” and the PROCIREP

2006 – D?but

25min – 35mm

Photography: Yorick Leseaux

Production : Les Films du belier (F), with the support of France 2, CNC COSIP and the Rh?ne-Alpes region and the Haute-Savoie department.

Getting the CNC quality price.

Selected at the Vend?me festival, the Locarno festival, the Rome festival and the European movie festival in Vannes (Price of the city of Vannes), Festival du court in Nice, Paris Cin?ma festival, C?t? court festival in Pantin (GNCR price)

2005 – Car Wash

10min – HD

With Kate Moran and Olivier Torres

Photography: Caroline Champetier

Production: Les Films du belier (F), with the support of France 2, the Pays de la Loire region, the delegation for Plastics Arts.

Selected at the Film de Locarno festival in 2005, the film de Rome festival in 2006

2004 – Quand nous ?tions punk

15min – 35mm

With Kate Moran and Nicolas Granger

Photography: Caroline Champetier

Production: Les Films du belier (F), with the support of France 2

Selected at the Film de Locarno festival in 2004, Paris Tout Court festival in 2004, Travelling Rennes festival in 2005, Larissa festival in 2005, Nice festival in 2005, Caen festival in 2005, Paris Onze bouge festival in2005, Cork festival in 2005, Aye Aye festival in Nancy, and Rome festival

TICKETS

Press about show:

Interview of Pascal Rambert

You realize both drama plays and dance plays, which is rather rare, how do you decide to stage one or the other?

After a period of a decade or so during which I made “mixed plays” with more emphasis on body play than on text and subject, I felt I needed To go back to the French language, to return to the spoken word again. Hence Clot?re de l’amour and Avignon ? vie; Now I want to give energy to the spoken drama and power to the body. So, I am planning separate projects at the moment, and before my next drama play to be presented in 2014, I am working on a dance play for 2013, “Memento Mori”.

Is the creative process different between a drama play and a dance play?

These are quite different areas for me. In the elaboration of a drama play, there is a written structure beforehand. whereas for dance plays what is exciting is to arrive in the studio without knowing what will come out of the work; Even if I have in mind the different modules, I Prepare the minimum and enjoy inventing directly on the dancers’ bodies .

“Memento Mori” is your fourth dance play, you have had no training as a dancer, you are not a dancer, Do you feel entitled to create a dance play?

I have no legitimacy and this precisely the reason why I like it. A kind of second life, as with my films. As I am generally against all sorts of ‘specialists’, it suits me to be free enough to imagine I can tackle such new subjects. There is no rule stipulating that you must have an experience as a dancer, anyone can do what suits them, so I am part of this anonymous crowd and I choose to take the freedom to think about this field which is so far unknown to me.

You say that “Memento Mori” has no other subject than movement in itself, but there is always a starting point, something which urges you to create a play. What is it this time?

There are two things. First, I have been feeling for some time that I need to evolve from a “space of slowliness” to a “space of swiftliness”. “Libido Sciendi” was rather slow, I tried to accelerate with Tamara Bacci in “Knocking on heaven’s door”, but it didn’t fit in with the state of extreme tension I expected her to play. I wanted to force myself to be faster, but also to show what comes before movement, and the very start from stillness to movement. I am a young choreographer, I am still in quest of what happens at the very beginning, even before bodies start moving. This is hardly possible, you cannot ask a body which has been shaped to forget completely its corporeal imprint, you cannot say ”forget everything and move as if you had never moved before”, but I was dreaming of this moment every choreographer is craving for at some stage, I am sure. As I am of a slow nature and find it hard to see what is happening inside the bodies, I need to observe them calmly and at length to get to understand how they break into movement.

Once I have understood, I can proceed to the next step, from balbutiating movement to a quicker pace. I have just read again Nietzche and the pre-Socratic philosophers, I have seen Herzog’s documentary “la grotte des r?ves’’(the cave of dreams), I have studied to the most remotely old times. With Gilgamesh’s epic poem, I had gone back to 5000BC. For “Memento Mori”, I want to go back to even more remote times, even as far as the The Aurignacian period, to the Paleolithic, and to conjure up naked bodies out of the light , as in Masaccio’s breathtaking fresco “Adam and Eve expelled from Edem”. It is a wonderful period, I am just discovering it but I am fascinated. When I worked with Antoine Vitez, I remember an exercise for which he said: ”Here, there is a bad king who says: since you are an actor, play Hamlet for me”, we answered that we didn’t know the text, but what Antoine meant was that we all have this faculty , deep inside , to say: “To be or not to be”, and this inner power is what attracts me. With “Memento Mori”, I want to dig up the we, our common roots dating back to 30 or 40000 years , what our bodies and unconscious have retained of those times . Once I heard that if you make old vases, vases dating back to the bronze age, ,if you turn very fast, as on a record player, you can hear the potter’s hammer at work. It sounds mad, but it is like a record. Sound particles are preserved in the raw material, which means that one can hear a sound which has been here for 10000 years. If this is possible, I presume that I too, as an apprentice choreographer, can try to bring back this moment to life.

“Memento Mori” – “remember that you will die”. Why have you chosen this title?

Like everyone, I have my territory. Before, I was not aware of it, but I am starting to realize it. There remain blank areas, I don’t understand everything yet, but I recently noticed that my plays are often related to time: After/before, “the beginning of Love”, “When we were punk”, “first anniversary”… fifty minutes… and also the performance I will stage for Kate Moran at the “hivernales” and at “La menagerie de verre” in 2012. All these titles are connected to important moments or in relation with an important moment. For “Memento Mori”, I want to focus on a time of Panick, the moment when one loses one’s balance, firm soil vanishing under one’s feet; four recent events, among them Fukushima, have made me feel the wing or the breath of death . It could have been me, and indeed this is something I have always lived with: ”Do not forget that you will die” and this will be one of the developments of the play.

Concerning “Memento Mori”, you say: ”before the fault”, “prelapsary” it sounds like genesis, original sin. You talk about Dionysus, the god of drink and excess. Will the play waver between the sacred and the pagan world?

When I discovered the word prelapsary, which means before the fall, I said to myself: it is sublime, it is the perfect word. But my subject here is not the sacred. Before the fall is a time indication. “Memento Mori” is a pagan play, a Dyonisiac play. I remember Nietzche’s “The birth of tragedy” a book I had loved so much when I was twenty and a beginner in the drama field. Nietzsche emphasizes the fight between the Dyoinisiac and the Apollonian. On the one hand the handsome body, on the other hand the grotesque, sperm, huge penises, fruit, wine. Contrary to the hyper clean minimalist plays I have been doing for some time, I want to create an overflowing play, with each scene overlapping on the next one. Nakedness, slowliness will generate pleasure, and pleasure will trigger a moment of trouble, of worry, which will finally subside into a moment of serenity.

So this play is composed of three movements, isn’t it?

Yes, with three phases of approximately 20 minutes each. It will start with naked bodies partly visible, then completely exposed, then in clusters which will start moving. Once the dancers have come out of the dark, the pagan festival will start, with fruit in plenty, bananas as big as wart-hog getting in contact with the bobby orifices, and grapes violently crushed under buttocks. This oneiric state of the body freed from cultural restraint will be followed by a phase of panick which is at the core of “Memento Mori”. After the moment of wonderful grace, as often in life, there will be a sort of panick, and I want to show this fear. What I want to do, actually, is to talk about the human condition, as in all my plays. Panick will subside though, into a moment of soothing. It is the final part, which I call cleansing, care. The dancers will come to a rest, tidying up and cleaning the stage and licking one another as a dog licks a bone clean. This last picture will be like the closing of the iris .There stands the play.

In “The epic of Gilgamesh” you address the subject of the origins of writing in an almost archeological way. “Memento Mori” refers to an even older period, when there were gestures but no words yet. So, will it be a silent play?

I have not decided yet. I would like all the dancers to sing. There must be some kind of presence of the spoken word, but I don’t know yet how…

The players will be naked all along the play why have you made this choice?

For the feeling of human skin under the light. Nothing else. I really think there is nothing as beautiful. Everytime I undress the bodies and put them under the light, it is splendid, and it is even more beautiful in daylight. In “Libido sciendi”, the bodies were vanishing in the light of dusk, in “Memento Mori” it will be the opposite.

There will be five dancers on stage: how have you chosen them? For their temperaments, their technical skills or for their physical appearance?

I have not chosen them yet, but I need performers who enjoy stillness, nakedness and who will be ready to create movement with a taste for Dionysiac joy and sensual fantasy, a taste for extreme physical performance, running, jumping, enduring, until they reach a state of real good tiredness, performers with a taste of one another’s skins, who will not recoil from the taboo contact,namely, licking each other.

You are working again with the Composer Alexandre Meyer. Have you already got a precise idea of the musical atmosphere of the play?

I think it is the first time we will have music all along the play. I have said to Alexandre:”Here, we have 60 minutes, to be organized in three sequences, 20 minutes each, with each sequence opening on to the next one, now you are free to do what you want”.

It is your first collaboration with Yves Godin, you are not used to working with light conceptors. The technical entry mentions no scenographist; does it mean that the light will replace the scenography?

Exactly. I have said to Yves as to Alexandre:” Here you have a 10 over 10 meter space, go on, build something in it. You know it must come out of the dark, you set up your appliances and I fill up the space”. I have already experienced this principle, Starting from complete darkness and working on the retinian perception in “De mes propres mains”. But this time I really need the help of an artist because in this play the appearance of the bodies depends completely on the quality of the light. The human skin coming out of the dark, the stillness and movement of the bodies, all is conditioned by the light.

“Memento Mori” will be created for the Hivernales in January 2013, the theme will be The Mediterranean. What links have you kept with the landscapes of your childhood? And what are the links between the theme and this play?

The link is the solar world. “Memento Mori” is a solar play. In the art gallery of Antibes, there is a painting by Picasso entitled “La joie de vivre”. This is it, this is the South, the body emerging from darkness to light, and a free body, liberated from the original sin. It is what I am looking for in this play, a Mediterranean body, a body under the sun, the body of a naturist, in the state of nature. “Memento Mori” stages an idyllic moment, rediscovering one’s genuine nature. The paintings of the nineteenth century, in the Aesthetic movement, and Whistler particularly, present these Geek bodies in long robes, and wearing laurel wreaths, under the sun, painted in a dream-like Athens. Naturally while rediscovering ancient Greece, these painters were dreaming, recreating, reinventing a world gone. I am doing the same, trying to bring back to life what I believe to be buried deep in ourselves, and which is at the core of our human nature, and I say to myself: I am sure that there remains in you, in me, some lingering trace of these gestures, that they are still present deep inside us. Nakedness, light, dancing, traces dating back to 30000 years and still present in ourselves. This is what “Memento Mori” is about.

Interview by M?lanie Alves de Sousa