“Things have to disappear for others to happen.” These prophetic words, which open the unclassifiable spectacle Internal Affairscould not have been better chosen.
By agreeing to unite their voices in this project, actress Sophie Cadieux, choreographer Mélanie Demers and musician Frannie Holder abandoned many of their certainties. Their uniqueness has disappeared for the common good so that a new theatrical object is born, where the tender, the gentle, but also the harsh and the rough follow one another.
Indeed, the three creators, very renowned in their respective circles, plunged into the unknown by visiting the disciplines of others. Singing with one voice or moving in unison, they face the audience in a state of great vulnerability that commands admiration. In this journey to the heart of the intimate, far from the ambient noise and “those noises we experience”, each one sings, dances and plays.
Together, they invite us to turn our gaze inward, towards these invisible borders that make up us all. It is a question here of atoms colliding, of rivers drying up to be reborn elsewhere, of the finitude of the unknown. But above all, the three artists speak to us of gentleness, of all those gentle gestures which are neither cutesy nor pale, but which ensure the sustainability of the world.
Evolving in an absolutely spectacular fluffy setting (hats off to Geneviève Lizotte), these women with protean talent captivate us, some with their words, some with their gestures or their songs.
With her enveloping voice, Frannie Holder delivers a performance that constitutes a real balm for bruised souls. Impossible to resist her luminous presence and the abandon with which she performs these new songs. It is, of the three, the most moving.
True to herself, Sophie Cadieux handles the text like a tightrope walker, oscillating between the serious and the comic. As for Mélanie Demers, we cannot take our eyes off her when her body and her entire face launch into a spasmodic choreography where all the emotions that a human heart can feel seem to jostle together.
PHOTO YANICK MACDONALD, PROVIDED BY ESPACE GO
Mélanie Demers notably offers an astonishing choreography where she dances with a shovel.
In fact, this performative spectacle, which does not follow any defined dramatic curve and is not burdened by any time or space markers, strangely soothes us. For an hour and a half, we truly end up forgetting the violence of our times.
The only regret: in this succession of gestures, songs and replies launched in chorus, we sometimes lose pieces of the text. However, the poetry of this score is beautiful and each word seems to have been carefully chosen.
Perhaps this text will be published one day so that we can taste it entirely and in small sips. Because there is in Internal Affairs a rich material to fuel reflection on our humanity.
Internal Affairs
Show by Sophie Cadieux, Mélanie Demers and Frannie Holder
At Espace GoUntil February 11