Your Majesties

‘Your Majesties’ revisits a historic moment in the contemporary world: the legendary speech made by President Barack Obama upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 2009.

Marta Navaridas and Alex Deutinger have both studied translation and dance. In ‘Your Majesties’, they have therefore created a piece which makes use of both these disciplines, reprising the speech made by Barack Obama upon receiving his Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, in which he talks about war, peace and hope.

The result is a unique piece which not only reproduces the American president’s words but invites the audience to listen to it differently, as a sort of extract of his official persona. The speech therefore resembles a score, accentuated and emphasised by movements which either underline or divert from it. With his hands indicating directions, his legs resting on the arm of the armchair, he walks as though in a Western, hides behind his jacket, ties a shoelace. Little by little, the beautiful machine becomes unhinged and Alex Deutinger’s actions become more and more extravagant for the context. That said, there is no intended parody to the piece, rather, a deconstruction, the exposure of a malfunction.

‘Your Majesties’ thus invites us to look at the space ‘between’, which both moves away from the text’s original meaning by making it look like an absurd recital, while at the same time reduces it to itself – despite everything, we can hear the ‘Obama sound’ and the hope that he was able to create through the subtle art of deviation; the very art, in fact, of translation. 

Source : Maison de la Danse