JE PENSE COMME UNE FILLE ENLÈVE SA ROBE

2009

CAST

Concept & choreography: Perrine Valli
Performers: Jennifer Bonn, Perrine Valli
Sound creation: Jennifer Bonn
Lighting: Cyril Leclerc
Scenography: Marie Szersnovicz, Perrine Valli
Set, costumes & accessories: Marie Szersnovicz
Stage management: Laurent Schaer
Video projection: Akatre / Frédéric Lombard
Artistic collaboration: Jennifer Bonn
Administration: Thibault Genton
Promotion: Aurélie Martin
Duration: 1 hour
Coproduction: Festival Faits d’Hiver, Théâtre de l’Usine
Sponsors: DRAC Ile-de-France, ADAMI, Ville de Genève – Department of Culture, République et canton de Genève, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, Loterie Romande. This work received financial backing for touring by Pro Helvetia and was selected as “+ des PSO”.
Place of creation: Mains d’Oeuvres, Micadanses, Théâtre de l’Usine
Photo: ©Akatre

Description

Je pense comme une fille enlève sa robe (“I think like a girl takes off her dress”) is a sentence by Georges Bataille which Perrine Valli uses to address prostitution and the relationship between men and women. The prostitute’s body becomes a mirror-body through which the man and the woman question each other.

What does the act of getting undressed signify? What if the naked body was not a body without clothes but a body without limits?

After the formal questions, the “how” of dance, Perrine Valli addresses the “why”, focusing on an issue that can undoubtedly lead to the question of “how to move the body”. How is it affected and in turn, how does it affect the space around it? Because its subject, the prostitute’s body, is not resolved in a raw embodiment or nudity. It transcends it, questions a person’s boundaries, in their intimacy, its being in the world – such a sensitive issue.

TEXT : MAINS D’OEUVRES

TEXTE FOR THE STAGE

blackness nothing but the double projectors of the roaming vehicles cutting through the silhouettes of the trees all around trees that frighten me that reassure me that are my hiding place that are my prison I can’t leave this place and already I hear the strange noises muffled cries laughter and groaning amidst rustling branches and bodies against the ground and the tree trunks shaking on their wheels and the low music that sometimes filters through the gap of a lowered window

I am the pale tree that stands out amidst the dark trunks my bare branches decorated with a few shiny trinkets that hang from a twig here and there to better capture the light of the low rays that sweep the woods along the roads that lead here to rid themselves of their dirty thoughts and my body is the receptacle of their most intimate confessions I am indulgence and our tacit agreement states that I have to forgive you for what my body hears of your guilty desires for which I am a reflection and a tool

I am the same woman who shares your bed I am the mother of your children I am her reflection in the mirror but you only have the courage to speak to that mirror and would refute until your last breath that this reflection might already exist in what is reflected but she can’t reach me neither me nor her because this is my place and that is hers and you are the wall that divides us we exist in a world you have created for us according to your ideas and you have to protect us because we are weak in this world which is itself the cause of our weakness and if only a long time ago we could have lacked depth to such an extent that we believed there was a competition between you and us but you weren’t so naïve and you divided and conquered and now she’s waiting for you at home and I’m waiting in the dark woods

when your work is done and you are empty and I’m full of your emptiness lying on the ground which was earth before and which now is only mud a few crumpled notes held tight in my hand with which I’m supposed to dry my tears which have already been dried up for a long time and I have already forgotten your face you are nothing but a slow burn extinguished by the fresh air of the night and by the humid earth and I lift my gaze to the dark vertical lines of the tree trunks with the sky for background their silent judgment their silent compassion their silent complicity with what happens here and already I have to stand up again because my lament is nothing but the first chorus in the nocturnal song of a choir of pale trees for an audience of invisible men.

TEXT WRITTEN AND PERFORMED ON STAGE BY JENNIFER BONN

Dates

3-4 March 2011: Swiss Dance Days, Bern, Switzerland
18 March 2011: Théâtre de Saragosse, Pau, France
16-17 August 2011: Tanz im August, Werkstatt, Berlin, Germany
9-10 November 2011: Mercat de las Flors, Barcelona, Spain
8 December 2011: Comédie de St-Etienne, France
25 February 2010: Institut franco-japonais, Tokyo, Japan
13-14 March 2010: Printemps de Sévelin, Lausanne, Switzerland
19 May 2010: Swiss Cultural Centre, Paris, France
1 June 2010: La Passerelle, St-Brieuc, France
29 September 2010: Mains d’Oeuvres, Paris, France
19 & 30 November 2010: Südpol, Luzern, Switzerland
24 & 27 November 2010: Phönix-Theater, Steckborn, Switzerland
16-18 December 2010: Maison de la Danse, Lyon, France
20-22 January 2009: Faits d’Hiver, Mains d’Oeuvres, Paris, France
29 January - 8 February 2009: Théâtre de l’Usine, Geneva, Switzerland
1 December 2009: Excerpt Super Deluxe, Tokyo, Japan

Presse

Le Monde, Télérama, Danser, Le Temps, La Tribune, Le Courrier, Le Phare, Scène Magazine, Bleu, Genève Active.