Masculines (2013)

(creation 2013)

Héla Fattoumi and Eric Lamoureux ask seven female dancers to perform femininity, and to explore the expressive potential of the body beyond the simple artifices allotted to the feminine.In an empty space overhung by seven lightboxes evoking the proverbial “glass ceiling”, they dress their seven performers in an arsenal of hair extensions and other body prostheses – worthy of Cindy Sherman or ORLAN – to produce a feminine landscape of disturbing homogeneity. Choreographing the transformation and riving of this idealized carnal fabrication, they draw out and thwart the most pernicious and alienating of the stereotypes attached to women. From nineteenth century odalisques brought together by the painter Jean-Dominique Ingres in his The Turkish Bath, to Moorish women posing silently and naked for colonial postcards, to the most contemporary representations of the sex doll, with a certain irony they unveil a veritable factory for clichés. Through the artifice of these representations, they lay bare the de-figuration of one entire fringe of humanity by another, and in response to this travesty of the erotic fascination of the male gaze, they bring us a horde of seven rebels.Almost literally lifting the lightboxes, which constitute veritable symbolic barriers, the seven beauties, until then prone and lascivious, take on rebellious and expressive movement. Combative gestural phrases give way to dancing pelvises swaying enticingly. The women oscillate between femininity and masculinity with impetuosity, attempting to escape all dualism.

Throwing gender into confusion, in the utopian vision of getting rid of its diktats, the message of Héla Fattoumi and Eric Lamoureux seems to be : may these women be free to play every possible extreme.

Performers Marine Chesnais, Lea Dodik, Sandrine Kolassa, Johanna Mandonnet, Clémentine Maubon, Alissa Shiraishi et Nele Suisalu Sound design Eric Lamoureux Collaboration Jean-Noël Françoise Sound manager Thomas Roussel Lighting design & technical direction Xavier Lazarini Lighting manager Jérôme Houles Costume Elise Magne & Héla Fattoumi Costume making Sylvia Crine & Annaïg Le Cann Thanks Mégane Giraud Artistic collaboration Stéphane PauvretProduction Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen/Basse-NormandieCoproduction Arsenal – Metz en Scènes, NorrlandsOperan, Mâcon – Scène nationale, théâtre de Caen, Moussem.eu with the support of Programme Culture de l’Union Européenne

With the support of the International Dance Programme of Swedish Arts Grants Commitee. Thanks to Dansstationen, Skänes Dansteater, Rorelsen and Danscentrum Syd of Malmö (SE).

dernière mise à jour : avril 2013