MAY B

Compagnie Maguy Marin (FR)

This piece, based on the writings of Samuel Beckett, whose work contradicts in its theatrical movement and atmosphere the physical and aesthetic performance of a dancer, has enabled us to lay the grounds for a secret deciphering of our most intimate, hidden and ignored gestures. To succeed in unveiling the tiny or spectacular gestures of the many unnoticeable and inconspicuous lives in which waiting and «not quit still» stillness create a void, a huge nothingness, a silent space filled with the hesitations. When Beckett’s characters yearn for stillness, they cannot help moving; be it a little or a lot, they move. In this essentially theatrical work, the point, for us, was less to develop words and speech than blown-up form of movement, thus seeking the meeting point between movement applied to theatre on the one hand, and dance and choreographic language on the other. (Maguy Marin)

“By distancing itself from the narrow realm of abstraction, too elliptical and remote, and by investing in a dimension that is, in material terms, just as malleable, the development of the work commits itself to a more political lyrical formulation – reduced somewhat by its grotesque underside. They come from the same primeval caves that we do, these characters on the stage that seem to have emerged from a mixture of rock and excrement, absorbed in the surprises that their human-ness causes them. At the same time, the invention of this grotesque style of lyricism has, written within it, the renewal of what it is ‘to dance’. It holds out in front of itself all the possibilities that dancing has
available to it, replacing them as if in a game and playing with them until ‘to dance’ has been dragged into ‘a dance’. And the journey that concludes the piece brings together, in a few suitcases, the way each person’s story deteriorates, as they leave for a destination without destiny.” (Jean-Paul Manganaro)

Photo: Hervé Deroo

Chorégraphy: Maguy Marin
Coproduced by Compagnie Maguy Marin, Maison des Arts et de la Culture de Créteil
Light designer: Alexandre Beneteaud 
Costumes: Louise Marin
Original music: Franz Schubert, Gilles de Binche, Gavin Bryars

Performed by: Lazare Huet, Rolando Rocha, Marcelo Sepulveda, Ennio Sammarco, Kaïs Chouibi, Lise Messina, Louise Mariotte, Agnès Potié, Isabelle Missal, Catherine Polo

With support of Teatroskop, a program initiated by French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, French Ministry of Culture, and Institut français Paris.

Duration 1 h 30 min

Nonverbal performance