Moscow
Some scenes can offend the sensibility of the youngest. Not recommended for children under the age of 18.
L'Autre Scène du Grand Avignon - Vedène
Creation 2019
Show in Russian with French and English surtitles
Running time 2h
surtitles
Images, poems, urban bodies. The life of Chinese artist Ren Hang laid bare by Kirill Serebrennikov’s incisive and tough outlook.
T 4 |
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S 6 |
S 7 |
M 8 |
T 9 |
W 10 |
T 11 |
F 12 |
S 13 |
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M 15 |
T 16 15h |
W 17 15h |
T 18 |
F 19 15h |
S 20 15h |
S 21 15h |
M 22 15h |
T 23 15h |
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“Life is a lie. Truth is a lie. When I take a picture, I'm naked...” Ren Hang
Outside. Bodies. Mischievous, distant, disinhibited, nonchalant. Naked. Windows open on the roofs of the city. Chinese artist Ren Hang photographed both cityscapes and nature, unclothing bodies like so many stylised, dreamlike landscapes. With tenderness, humour, or detachment, he exalted the grace of Chinese youths, rebellious, beautiful, and free. His poems, darker, are suffused with sex and loneliness, love and death. A life pulverised, persecuted, fragile, and melancholic. A much too short existence, which moved director Kirill Serebrennikov deeply. Two artists whose personal histories and works echo each other. Banned and attacked, they nonetheless managed to create their own art, free to explore themes of identity, sexuality, and of the place of the individual in his or her environment. Art as provocation, as a disturbing wake-up call. Raw, poetic, and insolent, it attacks conventional morality and totalitarianism. A necessary weapon in the fight to regain one's freedom of expression...
Born in Rostov-on-Don in Russia in 1969, Kirill Serebrennikov turned to theatre in 1992 after studying science at university. He adapted Maxime Gorki, William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, or Mark Ravenhill for Moscow theatres and directed operas at the Bolshoi Theatre and in Europe. The winner of several awards for his work in television, he has also directed feature films (The Disciple, Leto). He has been the director of the Gogol Center in Moscow since 2012. His daring, impertinent theatre shows a great freedom and spirit of resistance. Outside is his third creation for the Festival d'Avignon, after The Idiots and Dead Souls. Since August 2017, he has been the object of a Kafkaesque trial.
A self-taught poet and photographer, Ren Hang was born in China in 1987 and lived in Beijing. Often banned, his subtle compositions feature bodies set against urban or natural backgrounds with a mix of eroticism, distance, and humour. His poetic images are known throughout the world for their great sense of freedom. Ren Hang committed suicide in 2017.
With Odin Lund Biron, Alexey Bychkov, Yang Ge, Gueorgui Koudrenko, Nikita Kukushkin, Julia Loboda, Daniil Orlov, Andrey Petrouchenkov, Andrey Poliakov, Evgeny Romantsov, Anastassia Radkova, Evgeny Sangadzhiev, Igor Sharoïko
Direction, scenography, dramaturgy Kirill Serebrennikov
Choreography Ivan Estegneev, Evgeny Kulagin
Music Ilya Demutsky
Costumes Tatiana Dolmatovskaya
Lights Serguey Koucher
Stage direction Anna Shalashova
Production M.ART (Modern Artlife Foundation)
Co-production Festival d'Avignon
With the support of Gogol Center, Onda - Office national de diffusion artistique
In partnership with France Médias Monde
Hosted by Laurent Goumarre
With a member from Kirill Serebrennikov's artistic team, Akram Khan, Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll)