Via

“Via” is still part of Régine Chopinot’s initial works, along the lines of “Appel d’air” (In-draught) and “Grand Ecart” (Splits). Presented as an exercise in style, this coproduction with the Montpellier Danse Festival – where it was created in July 1984 – and with the Avignon Festival, is intended as an image of life, to be “understood as a great entertainment” [1], modelled on short films “where one image immediately takes the place of another, as quickly and effectively as possible” [2].

This vitality draws its power from a “baroque” atmosphere, characterised by lively music – punctuated of the sounds of drums, brass instruments and drinking songs – colourful costumes designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier and chiaroscuro lighting, the work of the lighting technician Gerard Boucher who joined the company for this creation. The unprecedented use of Telescan projectors with their ability to rotate, particularly remarked upon by the press, made it possible to outline the intentions of the stage direction more clearly, as the historian A. Suquet testifies: “The intensity of the light that they project onto the stage only emphasises the depth of the surrounding blackness: for a moment, the brightness illuminates only an absence, while the darkness gathers.” [3]

A flowery lamp-shade disguised as a skirt, a white Peter Pan collar on a black body, a panther print cap, tiger print dungarees, tattoo bandages… the imagination used in the costumes of “Via” contributes to the rendering of an atmosphere of eccentric spontaneity: ““Via” is a product which is consumed immediately, right now. It is a show of which nothing remains, or rather of which remains an energy that you feel but cannot speak about.” [4] In the eyes of A. Suquet, certain similarities can be drawn with the research of the painter Robert Rauschenberg for the shows of Merce Cunningham in the early 1950s: “The same rejection of homogeneity, the same appetite for the marriage and the irreverent recycling of subject matter, images and common things, the same kind of faded brilliance.” [5]

[1] R. Chopinot, document from the Compagnie Régine Chopinot, 1984.
[2] O. Saillard (dir.), “Jean-Paul Gaultier, Régine Chopinot: le défilé”, in Paris: Les arts décoratifs, 2007, p. 56.
[3] A. Suquet, “Chopinot”, Le Mans: Cénomane, 2010, p. 26.
[4] R. Chopinot, op. cit., 1984.
[5] A. Suquet, op. cit., p. 34.

Programme extract

“Mini-skirts in the air and heads down, the dance concentrates its energy on taking over the bodies. “Via”, the “way”, is both life with the creative birth, and the street on which it is popular. With moments of comedy, nostalgia, excesses, anguish, the bodies on stage tell us much more through the dance than words.”

Lise Brunel, programme from the Théâtre du 8ème, Lyon (November 1984)

Updating: February 2013