Encounter about
TOMBOUCTOU DÉJÀ-VU
(TIMBUKTU DÉJÀ VU)
Timbuktu brings up images of a strange place, a place of fantasy, a space where everything is possible. The notion of Déjà vu is all about this feeling of strangeness, this memory of a past that can't be identified, this confusion that doubles as a need to understand. Playing with titles and subtitles, a small community of seven artists presents a cyclical work that works as a mise en abyme. An initial choreographic segment is repeated, each time with different rules read aloud to the audience beforehand, questioning the very reality of what's come before. This never-ending return to a similar situation encourages the audience to let go so as to reach a more contemplative level of perception. The play, through its use of voices and bodies, tells of the tension between the individual and the group, of the ways out that are dreams and isolation, but also, and perhaps most of all, of this thing we call freedom.
EMMANUELLE VO-DINH
After training at the Conservatory of Tours, then at the Merce Cunningham School of New York, Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh first worked as a performer, before founding her own company, Sui Genris, in 1997. Making scientific research the cornerstone of her work, she created shows based on the work of neurologist Antonio R. Damasio, on Jean Oury's writings on schizophrenia, and on the studies of anthropologist Françoise Héritier on otherness and the notion of male/female. Romantic relationships and the absence of emotion are themes that come back time and again in her work, as do the concepts of time, memory, and repetition. In 2012 she was named director of the Phare, Centre choréographique national du Havre Haute-Normandie. She's since added another area of research to her till-then more abstract field of experimentation, namely, narration.
Distribution
with
Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh
Production
production Le Phare,
Centre chorégraphique national du Havre Haute-Normandie
photo © Olivier Bonnet
