She will be there with her gypsy gestures and her strong, deep voice of a mature woman. Catherine Ringer is a bomb of energy, emotion, talent and creativity. It is with all this that she returns to the stage of the International Literature Festival (FIL) this year.She comes to present to us poems by Alice Mendelson, a friend of her father, whose sensual poetry she discovered. The show is called The eroticism of living.
“These are poems that talk about physical love and passion, and are very sensual. And then afterwards, it moves on to something else too. But there is always this passion for life, this passion for color, light and beings, so it’s something broader than just poems about sexuality,” she says in an interview. . Alice Mendelson is now 97 years old.
The singer of the late group Les Rita Mitsouko and the partner and colleague of Fred Chichin (died in 2007) herself copes very well with her sixties. She even sang “Senior, I Love It,” a song that follows her from egg to maturity. Yes, his voice got a few tones deeper. Yes, you have to practice to maintain stage presence. “But I find that there are things that we gain on the other hand. Life evolves. We don’t see things the same way. It’s quite fascinating, I think. And I’m glad that life ends at some point too. I wouldn’t want to live forever,” she says.
Alice Mendelson’s poems were written between 1947 and 2022. And they had never been published before Catherine Ringer decided to make a show of them, in order to raise money for a theater.
Poems discovered
Catherine Ringer knew Alice Mendelson after her father’s death. After having been a French teacher for years, Mme Mendelson had become a storyteller when a friend spoke to Catherine Ringer about the quality of her poems. After reading them, Catherine Ringer decided to put them into a show, to the music of Grégoire Hetzel. “I thought they were beautiful and they inspired me,” she says. The result is immediately positive.
“It was really successful,” she remembers. People came out with bright eyes and felt nourished. »
They are nourished, no doubt, by the resilience of this woman, who speaks of the need to maintain “the vice of joy”, who suggests “never rushing to live”. “It’s an example of how to continue to live old,” says Catherine Ringer. He is one of those remarkable people who does good to others. » Buoyed by the success of the first, another show followed, and it was then that a publishing house suggested that Alice Mendelson publish her texts under the title: The eroticism of live. “She was very happy,” says the singer.
This is an example of how to continue to live old. He is one of those remarkable people who does good to others.
It is this spectacle that she brings to us, to this Quebec that she frequented a lot with her partner and colleague Fred Chichin, who also wanted to settle there before dying of cancer.
“He wanted to change countries. And he really liked your country for the ease of doing business,” she says.
Today, Alice Mendelson is bedridden. “She’s not dying, but she’s dying,” says Catherine Ringer. Like her father, Sam Ringer, who lived through concentration camps, Alice Mendelson is of Polish Jewish origin and lived through World War II. “She was her father who was deported. He was rounded up by the French police at the time, and she and her mother were also saved by a police officer. He told them to hide and they fled in the hay carts. And then she became resistant. »
Resistant, she still is today. “When I go to see her, there are magnificent moments of awakening,” says Catherine Ringer. Wake up, above all, live, before dying.