After five years of absence on the stages of the Belle Province, the Franco-Austrian choreographer Gisèle Vienne is back with her piece CROWD, presented on October 19 and 20 at Usine C. Created in 2017, this one evokes urban techno culture and moments of sharing, celebration and gathering. A show that has taken on a whole new meaning since the pandemic.
“What is beautiful in live performance is that we cannot be impervious to the evolution of society, of what surrounds us”, explains Gisèle Vienne. Indeed, between the first time she presented CROWD on stage in 2017 in France and today, where she is about to cross the Atlantic to show this work, the world has changed.
She remembers in particular having been able to play it between two confinements and to note that then, the free partiesthem rave parties were again banned. “In June 2021, in Brittany, there was a huge rally. People were partying, they were just dancing and there was a lot of police violence. One man even lost his hand, she recalls. I found that so absurd! »
Although she does not deny the existence of COVID-19, Ms.me Vienne explains that she felt a certain uneasiness, in particular about the media treatment. “On the one hand, we saw young people, who suffered from the start of the pandemic, finally having fun; and on the other, a journalist completely masked as if he was witnessing the preparation of an attack, she reports. It was shameless authoritarianism, filthy idiocy. »
What is beautiful in live performance is that we cannot be impervious to the evolution of society, of what surrounds us.
According to Gisèle Vienne, human gatherings have “strong and scientifically proven” therapeutic virtues. “People moving together to music or watching the same thing, the social gathering as they say, is very good for health. When we know that depression is the 5e cause of death in the world, we must question the political decisions that were made at that time, ”she laments.
Thus, two years after the height of the pandemic, Mme Vienna is delighted to be able to play on stage again CROWD. “We all went through the health crisis, so my piece resonates differently today,” she said.
Mix of experiences
To create CROWD, Gisèle Vienne has been inspired by various stories she has gone through in her life. First, when she lived in the late 90s in Berlin.
“I’m very interested in alternative music and the cultures it underlies. In general, they are also linked to a young generation, often at odds with society, which tries to invent something else, in intuition and in a situation of refusal and rejection, often. There is something very relevant in these spaces, and very artistically speaking, ”explains the one who studied music and philosophy in particular.
In addition, Gisèle Vienne is interested in the relationship to time and its perception. It is based in particular on its reflections on the philosopher Henri Bergson. “The past is a present experience, the anticipated future also exists in the present, and the construction of memory lives in the present moment. What are ultimately these temporal strata that constitute what is called the present and what is my sensitive relationship to time? asks the artist. For her, emotions, “small or intense”, alter the perception of time.
People moving together to music or watching the same thing, the social gathering as they say, is very good for health.
She gives as an example that time will not seem defined in the same way during a moment of danger as during an exaltation in the sun. “Emotions necessarily color the states of the body,” she adds. And it is by playing with these various sensitivities that she has built CROWD.
Stage side, CROWD is imagined “like a long sequence shot”. “You might think it’s a wide shot since it’s a set, explains Mme Vienna. But in fact, we create a very tight focus on each person. The public can direct their gaze as they wish, follow snippets of stories or a complete story. »
“Emotional Big 8”
The 15 performers on stage each embody a different story. “It’s a portrait gallery. There is nothing audible, but the narrative material is super strong. It sets up something intimate, ”she describes. For the viewer, this allows “to identify, to find themselves”, according to Mme Vienne, who has played this show several times.
” They [les spectateurs] emerge in a state of both hyperpresence and hypersensitivity; CROWD really has an effect, it’s beautiful to see, “she says.
Gisèle Vienne has long been interested in perceptual encoding, the process by which information is stored in memory. According to the designer, this goes through the body in particular. “The source of thought is obviously in the experience of a body in the world. And in those hunches, she says. It’s not a theoretical thought that will lead me to a strong political gesture, for example, but a feeling, an emotional flaw, a feeling of injustice, a rage…”
Thus, through CROWD, the choreographer tries to shift the perceptual encoding thanks to the states of the dancers’ bodies. She seeks, through this piece, “to share emotions”. “The way the performers move recalls the state of the body induced by the feeling of love,” she says. I seek to create an epidermal relationship with others. »