Video
Débandade
First showing 23, 24 & 25 November 2021
Le Lieu Unique, Centre for contemporary culture in Nantes
"I would like Débandade to be somewhere between musical comedy, vox pop, stand-up comedy and the ritual of exorcism".
In 2019, at the invitation of TAP in Poitiers, the CND in Paris and the CCN in Montpellier, I had the opportunity to work with several groups of students aged between eighteen and twenty-five. The piece Nous vaincrons les maléfices, which grew out of this work, looks back at the utopias of the 1970s through the eyes of today's youth, marked by the threat of ecological collapse. The starting point is Michael Wadleight's documentary Three Days of Peace and Music, about the legendary Woodstock gathering. Overlaid on the soundtrack, which acts as a dramaturgic thread, the students' words question those of their elders about the excesses of a capitalist society that they have largely helped to validate. This enlightening experience strengthened my curiosity about this generation that was born into this century and which questions it so well; it also laid the foundations for a process that I would like to continue here.
Why a piece about men?
All the more so if the aim is to question a system of gender assignment that is widely questioned today? As I met this panel of young dancers from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds and worked with them, I became aware of a fully incorporated fluidity of gender, a multiplicity and complexity of perspectives, incarnated in the bodies themselves, that I wanted to question.
I tried, very tentatively at first, to question them about how they experience their masculinity today. Specifically, as contemporary dancers sharing a common environment, despite being geographically and culturally distant. The response was immediate, revealing a genuine lack and a real need to articulate the challenges related to gender, which they all experience on different scales and from sometimes diametrically opposed perspectives.
In a word, in the context of the resurgence of a welcome but very offensive brand of feminism, I wanted to ask them how they were doing. Because no, I don't believe that the question is simple and simply resolved by politically correct positions, just like any that question the representations of power, knowing that it is always power itself, and the monsters it generates, that need to be questioned. Thus the idea of an all-male project was born. A man's production conceived by a woman, a transgenerational production, a production that would speak to the feminine from male points of view and feelings.
Olivia Grandville
Press coverage
"Débandade d'Olivia Grandville", Nicolas Villodre, Danser Canal Historique
distribution
Conception: Olivia Grandville
Choreography: Olivia Grandville and the performers
Performers: Habib Ben Tanfous, Jordan Deschamps, Martin Gìl Enrique, Ludovico Paladini, Matthieu Patarozzi, Matthieu Sinault, Eric Windmi Nebie and Jonathan Kingsley Seilman or Antoine Bellanger
Sound design: Jonathan Kingsley Seilman
Video creation and additional artistic view: César Vayssié
Lighting design: Titouan Geoffroy et Yves Godin
Scenography: James Brandily
Costumes: Marion Régnier
Collaborations: Aurélien Desclozeaux, Rita Cioffi
Stage and video management: Titouan Geoffroy
Sound control: Thibaut Pellegrini
Lighting control: Sébastien Vergnaud
Extract from Sacre du Printemps, choreography by Pina Bausch, premiered on 3 December 1975 at the Opernhaus Wuppertal.
Production: Mille Plateaux, CCN La Rochelle
Partners: le lieu unique (Nantes) ; Chorège – CDCN (Falaise) ; Les Subs (Lyon) ; CCN of Rillieux-la-Pape, direction Yuval PICK, as part of the Accueil-Studio programme ; Charleroi danse, Choreographic Centre of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation ; La Place de la danse, CDCN of Toulouse-Occitanie ; Les Quinconces et L’Espal, Le Mans national stage ; TAP-Théâtre Poitiers Auditorium ; CNDC of Angers, CCN of Nantes, CCN2 of Grenoble.
With the support of the CCN of Caen in Normandie – direction Alban Richard, of SEPT CENT QUATRE VINGT TROIS (Nantes). With support from the Loire-Atlantique Departmental Council and the Pays de la Loire Region.