In the age of the image, several creations took the figure of Orpheus as support — for example, Reflector, of Arcade Fire (2013), and Portrait of the girl on fire, by Céline Sciamma (2019). Between theater and dance, The myth of Orpheus is part of this extension of a very contemporary reflection on love and appearances.
The boards of the Trident, this is a striking element, reveal from the start a suspicious Orpheus: “And here you are repeating millennia of clichés”, the chorus will say about the passion which unites him to Eurydice. This choice will immediately impose a distance, will shift the gaze; the critical angle will allow us to follow “a passion” more than a passionate man, one whose impulses knew how to move even the gods.
In the adaptation by Isabelle Hubert, this love is that of a young man for his superior – Charles Roberge and Éva Saïda, very credible. A mother who is twice his age, she already has her own life: but will he be able to hear her? The attraction is there, which unfolds between the two actors, at the same time as the dancers quietly insinuate themselves into the story to be told.
The joint staging of Frédérique Bradet (Factoryin 2022, already found some nice takes for dance) and Alan Lake will beautifully embed the two lines of play and choreography: dance and theater find themselves intertwined, on a rich scene which contributes to the fade.
The era of suspicion
The timeless style of Vano Hotton pleases from the outset: antique cellar or warehouse walls alike, vast space for group compositions or movement around the actors, its large box with high walls links myth and contemporaneity – the dancers and dancers will share center stage, taking turns in evocative solos that make for many of the show’s most inspiring moments. Antoine Berthiaume’s soundscape plays on primitive sounds and appeals to the chest, the bass notes amplifying with the descent into hell: that of Orpheus? That of Eurydice?
It will be, rather, that of a meeting which is not one. This will mean the descent into hell, for which Bradet and Lake bet on relying solely on the bodies: tensions and clashes, collisions. The story will be left behind; each spectator here will vibrate according to their own abilities, in the tearing of bodies.
From this tense dive, however, a luminous construction will emerge around the troop in organic accretion, each dancer struggling with a single battle. On softer music, their challenges then become ours. Abandoning critical discourse, the show then offers a real collective space in which to feel the shackles in which we are still struggling.
With these struggling bodies and their desires in mind, this phrase from Lacan will come back to us: poets who, it is known, do not know what they are saying, still say it before the others. If we extend it to artists, we would hear them telling us, perhaps, that a sequel remains to be invented.