Welcome to paradise

WELCOME TO PARADISE / first performed 1989

Choreography and dance performance Joëlle Bouvier, Régis Obadia

“This duet was composed not long after the two dancer-choreographers produced their first short films (‘La Chambre’ and ‘L’Étreinte’). If their primary source is neo-realist Italian cinema, other references show through, notably in the soundtrack, which reuses dialogue from Sam Fuller’s films and ‘I Want to be Loved by You’ performed by Marylin Monroe. But here, cinema is more than a reference, it is choreographic material: the concept of the music soundtrack, lighting, linking of sequences and effects contribute to create a film-like choreography. With no set, and as props, just a bouquet of flowers and a rope – at times a swing, at times possibly a rope around the neck – the the two dancers (he in a dark jacket, she in a simple black dress and high heels that are soon discarded) work their way through the range of feelings that affect a couple: tenderness, sorrow, desire, ecstasy, submission, escape. With a rare dramatic accuracy, entirely carried by their physical presence, they polish the facets of a love affair – sensual and cruel, anchored in the body – until they gleam. This duet between hypnosis and vertigo is marked by a recurrent eddying motif. It ends in a white cloud of talcum powder which both dancers throw into the air, a ‘cloud of unknowing’ which descends as a halo around the image of their crossed destinies.”  Source: Dictionnaire de la danse, Philippe Le Moal, Ed Larousse, 1999

Credits

Chorégraphie et interprétation Joëlle Bouvier, Régis Obadia bande son Patrick Roudier costumes Thomas Smith lumières Marc OlivieroCoproduction Théâtre de la ville, Maison de la culture du Havre, l’EsquisseRéalisation vidéo Charles Picq date du document 1992 production Maison de la Danse

Updating: March 2011