Photo © Aglaé Bory
Created in November 2008 at Festival ¡Mira! / TnBA - Théâtre national de Bordeaux-Aquitaine
With
Stéphanie Fuster dance
José Sanchez guitar
Alberto Garcia voice
Conception, Scenography, Direction Aurélien Bory
Choreography Stéphanie Fuster
Music José Sanchez
Light designer Arno Veyrat
Direction assistants Sylvie Marcucci, Hugues Cohen
Technical conception of sets Pierre Dequivre
In charge of set Arnaud Lucas
Set construction Atelier de la Fiancée du Pirate
Sound engineer Stéphane Ley
Costume designer Sylvie Marcucci
Stage manager Arno Veyrat
Technical managers in alternation Joël Abriac, François Dareys, Stéphane Ley, Arno Veyrat
Production, administration, booking Florence Meurisse, Christelle Lordonné
Production Compagnie 111 - Aurélien Bory
Coproduction and residencies Festival ¡Mira! / TnBA - Théâtre national de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne E.T.E
With the help of Théâtre Garonne - Toulouse, Théâtre de Cavaillon, Scène nationale
Thanks to La Fabrica Flamenca - Toulouse
Compagnie 111 - Aurélien Bory is under agreement with Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication - Direction Régionale Affaires Culturelles Midi-Pyrénées, Region Midi-Pyrénées, and benefits from the support from City of Toulouse and Conseil Général de la Haute-Garonne.
Compagnie 111 - Aurélien Bory benefits from the support from Fondation BNP Paribas for the development of its projects.
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Performances
since November 2008
BORDEAUX TnBA - Festival ¡Mira! 11 > 12 novembre 2008
SAINT MARCET Pronomade(s) en Haute-Garonne 18 avril 2009
LAUSANNE (Suisse) Théâtre Vidy-L 25 > 29 mai 2009
NANTERRE Théâtre Les Amandiers 23 septembre > 24 octobre 2009
TARBES Le Parvis – Scène nationale - Collections d’hiver 8 janvier 2010
TOULOUSE Théâtre Garonne 12 > 17 janvier 2010
BOULAZAC Agora - Pôle national des arts du cirque 26 janvier 2010
MONTPELLIER Les treize vents - CDN 2 > 5 février 2010
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Foreword
by Aurélien Bory, September 2008
Qu’est-ce-que tu deviens ?
"Qu'est-ce que tu deviens ?", like the English, "What's up?", is a question as banal as it is terrifying; it asks what you have become. It says that time has passed and that changes have occurred. It questions the choices made, and demands an on-the-spot assessment. It freezes the process of becoming, which is by nature in motion. It shows interest in the person asked, and even love, yet it can also be a sign of disinterest or disenchantment. It is a warning signal, a sting. There is despair in the way it asks, "What have you become?", yet hope is what drives evolution. It forces us to look at the known realm behind us, while the process of becoming propels us into the future, into the unknown.
The meeting
I met Stéphanie Fuster in Toulouse, before she left for Seville to immerse herself completely in flamenco. I was touched by her special sensitivity, her amazing personality, the radical nature of her choice: to abandon everything in order to devote herself to it completely. She stayed there for eight years learning to be a répétitrice, then a dancer with the greatest names in dancing. She came back with her dance and asked me to write a show for her. I first thought that that was out of keeping with the areas of my work, which is mainly geared to the question of space. Then I changed my mind. There was of course a divergence. But that divergence was also present in her career; she who had decided to confront an art belonging to another culture, who had the status of an intruder in a symbolic discipline. I gradually realized that it was her portrait I wanted to do. A stage portrait. To imagine the space on stage which is that of her career in other climes, and to imagine her dancing, which is that of her inner, emotional range. Flamenco is there, certainly, with José Sanchez on the guitar and Alberto Garcia singing, but in a different context, that of a woman in search of herself, who is emancipated, who lives and who dies.
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From nature
by Eric Demey, Mouvement.net, November 2008
Two concepts of the being inhabit western culture. Among the misnamed pre-Socratics, Parmenides stipulated that the being is timeless, One and motionless, while Heraclitus was less struck by the substance of things than by what they become: "Nothing is, everything becomes". This scission later aimed to separate classic art, based on balance, symmetry, foundation, from baroque art where everything is in perpetual metamorphosis, precarious and elusive.
In his latest creation, "Qu'est-ce que tu deviens"?, in its world premiere at the TnBA, Aurélien Bory offers an inventive and brilliant spectacle which brings to life the solitude of the being and the vanity of existence. From childhood to the years of apprenticeship of active life – "you start to work hard" to maturity and death, the 50-minute show depicts the life of a rose as red as flamenco with a lifespan even briefer than that of the poet Ronsard.
The anodine character of the question that serves as the title is overturned in a somber trajectory where gravity is the result of derision. Everything starts off well. A young girl joyfully does a series of flamenco steps in a space as vast as a large plain. Dressed in a traditional red dress, laughing, playful, she operates a magical change when she takes leave of her dress – or the dress takes leave of her – as a doll changes its panoply and as one leaves childhood. Without noticing. With her slow step and her plaintive singing, Alberto Garcia, the ghostly incarnation of passing time, thrusts the being towards its future.
The guitarist, hidden up to now, emerges as the first companion of a life. A hilarious glide in a wheelchair on the floating floor of a lambda apartment, he plays while she practices dancing with an invisible teacher. Finished, the time of carefree living and the years out of doors, it is in a container that the air starts to run out. An external/internal work which multiplies sounds tenfold; like Stéphanie Fuster, in front of her mirror, the solitude is only broken by echoes of oneself. Hence, exit José Sanchez, ejected in his wheelchair. Here is the third act of a tragic existence.
Air, water, fire are the favourite motifs of baroque flight. Having gone up in smoke from her container from which water is now leaking, Stéphanie Fuster has come back to dance in an immense footbath, the bravura piece of this spectacle. Ultimate paradox, it is in this water that the graceful fluidity of the dance is lost. In turn luminous, divided up like the scales of its reflection, the pool finally changes into a receptacle of black ink in which Fuster's dance becomes stiffer, more angular, obstinate as if seeking to escape from something, to crush it.
If it were death, it would come as no surprise. After pathetic jolts like those of a struggling animal, Stéphanie Fuster lies down in this black water and, imitated by José Sanchez and Alberto Garcia, offers up her face to the selenic light. A superb tableau. It is the youthfulness of the actors and their fragility which the audience applaud. The ultimate thrust of a strange, beautiful, moving spectacle where the flamenco is audaciously taken out of context and magnificently interpreted, and whose relative brevity, like that of life itself is what we most regret.
