“… He said that he’d like to show himself differently, and suddenly he opens a new Instagram account… That she found herself super beautiful that morning and regretted not posting anything… And it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I activated parental control over his screen time… That he’d love to be liked, that that girl in his class liked him. That everyone in his class liked him too… And that sometimes she had a hard time understanding the expectations of others. And that she’d like be a little more coached, in general, in her life… And that he’d like to have a boss in these uncertain times. A classic boss… And that we’ve always had a tendency to compare ourselves to others, even if we know it makes us unhappy…. And that there’s a study that shows that silver medallists are often more unhappy than bronze medallists.”
- 2021
Current Currents
spectacle, danse
2h10
CURRENT CURRENTS seeks how to facilitate the coexistence of different individuals without them necessarily forming a group. Through a collage of intimate tableaux in which performed actions mix with documentary scenes, the five dancers use their bodies and the song that traverses them to evoke current social issues.
CURRENT CURRENTS strives to go against the current of the perpetual spectacle making and hyper-exposition of oneself by proposing moments of non-representation, calm, tenderness and fragility. And if the sum of the parts was greater than the whole?
To come in 2023-2024:
Zürich tanzt + Tanzhaus, Zürich.
Dampzentrale, Bern.
TBB, Yverdon.
ADN-danse, Neuchâtel.
Arsenic, Lausanne. 13-18.07.2021 (premiere)
CURRENT CURRENTS marks the second phase of a creation cycle (after TRAVERSER TOUT ENTIER) in which the body is considered as a medium for communication. Through their bodies and voices the performers strive to examine the varying impacts that different current social issues have upon them. The piece aims to indulge in the luxury of nuance and complexity that the realities of the daily struggle for survival or human dignity often render impossible. A sensitive experience rather than a manifest one, the piece is an attempt to keep intact an ensemble of contradictions and paradoxes without necessarily trying to resolve them.
CURRENT CURRENTS goes against the current of the perpetual spectacle making and hyper-exposition of oneself by proposing moments of non-representation, calm, tenderness and fragility. Watching, dancing, waiting, resting, being at times extraordinary and at others pathetic: the dancers follow their individual trajectories, intermingle and separate, existing simply on the stage before the spectators’ eyes. For the audience, the distinction between the centre of the stage and the sidelines is blurred; they have just as much access to the dancers when they are consciously performing in the centre of things as when they seem to forget themselves, or at least forget that they are still visible in margins.
CURRENT CURRENTS is a collage of different individual tableaux, punctuated by choral gatherings that evoke a collective solitude. At different moments the performers come together like an awkward Greek chorus, looking for the possibility of harmony without always achieving it. They embrace the dissonance as much as the euphoric unisons.
CURRENT CURRENTS brings different beings together for a potential moment of coexistence, without necessarily striving for consensus. Through its ensemble of heteroclite performers and their actions the stage, the piece offers up a space in which we as audience members can confront ideas or actions that we may find disturbing and thus puts us in an uncomfortable position rather than comforting us in our certitudes.
CURRENT CURRENTS incorporates the notion of judgement in order to immediately test it. If the piece begins by a clear and binary invitation to judge the propositions made on stage, the repetition and accumulation of examples finally encourages a re-questioning of the solidity of our own judgements.
CURRENT CURRENTS questions the very notion of inclusivity and multiplicity. Fragments of text - non-exhaustive lists, monologues or awkward attempts at speech – punctuate the piece and lead to such questions as: How can one speak of the other? How to name the other, even in an incorrect way? Would it simply be better, in certain cases, to not give names at all?
CURRENT CURRENTS examines our identities and their fabrication before the eyes of the others. The personal propositions follow in succession before the eyes of the other performers and the audience, and touch upon all of our identities, which are composed of that which we like and that which we understand others to like or fashioned by values that we develop or by the changing values of society at large. The piece questions the necessity that possesses us in this day and age to unwaveringly affirm our identities.
