Permutation #18

Clyde Chabot asked the participants to re-enact the scene on which his play Childhood Friend is based: a walk in the forest bringing together 3 friends who have been separated for almost 40 years. The video images produced gave rise to various experiments on the stage. In addition, Patrick Laffont de Lojo’s video approach and Sophie Bocquet’s choreographic approach opened up new perspectives for the performance of her text A Soldier’s Daughter.

Patrick Laffont de Lojo explored the text Paysage avec palmiers by Bernard Wallet. This text is about the atrocities of the war in Lebanon. 3 performers entangled among green plants took turns blowing or carrying this text or filming the one carrying the text up close, and the images were video-projected live. This diffracted interpretation in 3 presences, images and plants created a gap with the situations described, making their reception possible.

Sophie Bocquet has sketched out the first steps of a new project, ‘On s’enferme dehors puis on essaie de rentrer’, inspired by Chekhov’s Room No. 6. Ward 6 is the insane ward in the hospital of a small Russian town. Each day the three dancers warmed up for the play, using body cues and rhythmic instructions. Extracts from the text were carried or extended by textual improvisations, directed physical performances or video environments.

Lola Guiton is at the very beginning of a creative project, ‘Et le cygne m’apparut’, which deals with questions of identity through gender and sexuality. She is developing it as part of the ‘Fond régional pour les talents émergents’ (FoRTE). She invited the performers to improvise textually or physically on the themes of significant changes in their lives and the flaws in each of them, proposing to draw inspiration from the fictional setting of a railway station or from their own reality. She defined video projection surfaces and frames in the space. Video was used to fragment or multiply the bodies in real time.