What

Thierry Smits collaborates with Antoine Pickels for the dance and chamber opera Reliefs d’un banquet, whose core theme examines the anguish generated by the ever-threatening presence of totalitarian thinking and the weight this places on freedoms acquired or to be subdued.

 

The songs based on Plato’s Dialogues in Erik Satie’s Socrates illustrate this point, as do the dances choreographed to the piano solo Cheap Imitation, which John Cage had proposed as an interpretation or arrangement of Satie’s oeuvre for a ballet by Merce Cunningham.

The deployment of bodies on stage is the guiding thread that gives meaning to the tale, even when it comes to the various passages for the singers, whose intensely physical presence is amplified by their voices.  Six sequences feature these bodies, which ultimately constitute the vehicle through which emancipation become possible or, conversely, is shattered by violence. They evoke, in turn, elegance and refinement, drunkenness, sport and work, fascism, horror and torture, culminating with a depiction of Socrates’ death. The flesh, whether glorified or bruised, is a place for exploration that countenances every possible desire and every imaginable suffering.

DATE CONTENU

Dates

Thierry Smits collaborates with Antoine Pickels for the dance and chamber opera Reliefs d’un banquet, whose core theme examines the anguish generated by the ever-threatening presence of totalitarian thinking and the weight this places on freedoms acquired or to be subdued.

 

DATE CONTENU
2004/03/30 30 > 31.03.2004 Biennale Internationale Charleroi/Danses, Les Ecuries Charleroi
2004/04/23 23 > 29.04.2005 Théâtre Varia Brussels
2004/05/04 04 > 08.05.2004 Théâtre Varia Brussels
2004/05/18 18.05.2004 Théâtre le Muselet Châlons en Champagne (FR)
2004/06/04 04.06.2004 De Velinx Tongres

Distribution

— Direction

Thierry Smits et Antoine Pickels

— Chorégraphie

Thierry Smits

— Direction musicale

Luk Callens

— Chant

Baiba Bartkeviča, Cécile Bonnet, Angélique Noldus, Anja Wilbrink

— Piano

Jan Vermeulen

— Danseurs

Benjamin Bac, Ines Cera, Ken Hioco, Hervé Koubi, Guillaume Marie, Wei Meng Poon, Erica Trivett

 

— Musique

Erik Satie, Socrate, John Cage, Cheap Imitation

— Dramaturgie

Antoine Pickels

— Scénographie et éclairages

Simon Siegmann

— Costumes

Alberto Fabbri [Ainu #8]

— Maquillages

Patricia Timmermans

— Assistant chorégraphe

Lucius Romeo-Fromm

 

— Assistants costumes

Cédric De Beuf, Samira Benali

— Directeur technique

Thomas Beni

— Régie plateau

Didier Rodot

— Production

Compagnie Thor

— Coproduction

Charleroi/Danses, Centre chorégraphique de la Communauté française (direction artistique: Frédéric Flamand); Théâtre Varia, Centre dramatique de la Communauté française de Belgique, Bruxelles; Théâtre du Muselet, Scène nationale de Châlons-en-Champagne

— Avec l'aide de

C.C. De Velinx, SACD, Catalpa vzw, et le soutient du Ministère de la Communauté française de Belgique (Wallonie-Bruxelles) – Direction générale de la Culture, Service de la Danse.

 

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