In the middle of the immense hall of the Arsenal contemporary art centre, Brigitte Poupart circulates like a whirlwind, gauging the sets in one corner, chatting with a dancer in the other. This multidisciplinary artist, actress, director, director, dancer, devotes herself here to a more recent passion, that of the circus.
It is through the circus, but also through theater and dance, that we enter Brigitte Poupart’s new show, Until we die.
And it is in a field of ruins that all these arts come to life.
Are we in the midst of a cataclysm? Is it an explosion, a natural disaster? The visitor will begin his journey through the paintings and sets of the show, and he will go back in time to discover the past life, the happy, light past of the victims of the disaster.
We talk about a journey because it is a visit, a wandering for the public, who can move as they please in the space of the Arsenal gallery, choose the scenes or the characters they wants to follow, even go and sit in the sets if the staging allows it. This is how he will be invited to project himself into the past of the characters, going back to a big initial party where he himself is invited, with a DJ at the key.
It’s with the show Luziawhich she directed for the Cirque du Soleil, which Brigitte Poupart first invested in the world of the circus, then projected it into her personal universe, both dark and shimmering.
Something beautiful
” It is after Luzia, in 2017, that I had the idea for this show, says the designer. The language of the circus is very poetic. And I realize that this work is part of a poetic cycle. We talk about what hangs from our noses, what we don’t see but which is in danger of exploding at any moment, imminent disasters. For me, there is only poetry to be able to talk about it, to return to something beautiful. »
Last spring, Brigitte Poupart, who likes to invite visitors into immersive experiences, also brought her audience into ruins. These ruins were those that followed 9/11. The show, an immersive sound experience, was inspired by the collection of poems Excessive sky, by the poet Madeleine Monette, on the tragedy of the World Trade Center. “It’s a thematic cycle,” says Brigitte Poupart, who worked on this theme during an artistic residency in New York.
With Until we die, “we enter a place that is quite anxiety-provoking, in the sense that we arrive too late. The place is destroyed. A catastrophe happened which I do not want to name in the literal sense. It can be an explosion, it can be a cataclysm. I want people to interpret it in their own way”.
It was after “Luzia”, in 2017, that I had the idea for this show. The language of the circus is very poetic. And I realize that this work is part of a poetic cycle. We talk about what hangs from our noses, what we don’t see but which is in danger of exploding at any moment, imminent disasters. For me, there is only poetry to be able to talk about it, to return to something beautiful.
As the public enters the space, the sets follow one another. A drowned man comes back to life. “People are starting to come to life again, in a very poetic way, and we see scenes inhabited by each character who is there. This all brings us back to the start of their evening. It can be the day before, the day before, two or three days ago. Time has dilated. Then we find them all together. They were all at the same party. And we realize that performers and spectators are in the same place. So we are all part of the party, ”explains the director.
Audiences, who have been deprived of performing arts for so long by the pandemic, need this catharsis, she believes. ” It’s a metaphor. We’re all here watching this destruction, but what are we left with? What do we do with it while we’re still alive? Are we celebrating our carelessness? Our comfort? »
Spirit of the place
For Brigitte Poupart and her company Transthéâtre, the locations of a performance are of paramount importance. And Arsenal is one of the few spaces in Montreal that can host a circus show. “I needed 30 foot high ceilings. »
During the rehearsal we are attending, she directs a performer who walks on a wall of doors, hanging from a hook. “It’s vertical dancing,” she says. In a corner of the decor, a bathtub is suspended, evoking the idea that one day, an entire dwelling would unfold on this floor.
This immersive experience is somewhat inspired by the show Sleep No Morepresented in an entire hotel in New York, where the public was also invited to stroll through the sets.
But for Brigitte Poupart, the show does not stop there. Until we die is in fact the second chapter of a trilogy, which will take us even earlier in the history of the characters. Already, the director has shot five films which still go back over time to childhood, long before this party which turned into a disaster.
Unfortunately for this passionate jack-of-all-trades, the grant system still operates in a vacuum, so the film component of the project has yet to receive the funding it needs to come to life.