Kiss & Cry

"Breathtaking enchantment, hypnotic abduction, humour, perfection of an art form."

- ARMELLE HÉLIOT, LE FIGARO

Produced by the prestigious Belgian contemporary choreographic centre, Charleroi Danses, Kiss & Cry is a highly original production in which film, dance, theatre, words and DIY combine, where the sensual movements and meeting of bare hands take over the stage and become the work's true protagonists. Kiss & Cry offers a new language, a new way of telling a story that disturbs the boundaries that exist between different artistic genres. The magic "nano-world" of Kiss & Cry presents itself, before your very eyes, as something unique and different in every performance.

"Where do people go when they disappear from our life, from our memory?" This is the question haunting a woman as she waits alone on the platform of a railway station, while she thinks forlornly of all the people who have disappeared from her life. The people she once met and no longer thinks about. The people she has dreamed of. The people she no longer has near because of an abrupt jolt of fate. The people who have been with her for a while and from whom she has parted company due to weariness or disenchantment. "Where are they?" A question we ask ourselves as well. "Lost in the deep dark recesses of your memory," concludes the voiceover of Kiss & Cry, a truly astonishing work which, in April 2014, is being performed in the Teatros del Canal as part of the programme of the Festival de Otoño a Primavera. As the production unfolds, a drawer of memories opens, telling a subtle story in miniature, full of joy and beautiful images.

Kiss & Cry is a unique experience which displays a choreography performed by hand and finger movements, the projection of a film and a live exhibition of the process of creating this film... all at the same time. Onstage, different codes and disciplines co-exist harmoniously: reality, stage presence and a highly evocative sensory register. We are witness to a highly unusual staging, where hands and dancing fingers join together, caress and slide between dolls' houses and miniature figures in an hypnotic game of "nanodance" (as defined by the company itself) in which the audience encounters a work that is totally out-of-the-ordinary but also of absolute precision.

The production, the result of a meeting between two of the most dynamic figures in contemporary European theatre, film-maker Jaco Van Dormael (a double Cannes prize-winner) and choreographer Michèle Anne De Mey, comes to Spain after the enthusiastic reception it has received from an international public since its 2011 premiere. The Télérama newspaper praised it as "one of the most surprising, inventive and transforming works you can see", while Le Monde observed that it "generates unadulterated pleasure, especially since the images, either dreamlike or funny, are superb". La Libre Belgique described it as "sheer magic, sheer joy" and the critic of Utopia Park felt it was "simply the most magical performance I've seen in a long, long time."

*The origin of the name of the production: In ice skating rinks, the space called "kiss & cry" is where the skaters taking part in major competitions wait to hear the points they have been given by the jury after finishing their performances. They either congratulate themselves on achieving a good score or cry after getting a bad one.

 

Credits

ORIGINAL IDEA: Michéle Anne De Mey y Jaco Van Dormael

IN A COLLECTIVE CREATION WITH: Grégory Grosjean, Thomas Gunzig, Julien Lambert, Sylvier Olivé, Nicolas Olivier

CHOREOGRAPHY AND "NANODANCES": Michéle Anne De Mey, Grégory Grosjean

DIRECTION: Jaco Van Dormael

TEXTS: Thomas Gunzig

SCRIPT: Jaco Van Dormael

LIGHTING: Nicolas Olivier

CAMERA: Julien Lambert

CAMERA ASSISTANT: Aurélie Leporcq

STAGE DESIGN: Sylvier Olivé

ASSISTANT STAGE DESIGN: Amalgame - Elisabeth Houtart y Michel Vinck

ASSISTANT DIRECTORS: Benoît Joveneau, Caroline Hacq

SOUND DESIGN: Dominique Warnier

SOUND: Boris Cekevda

MANIPULATION AND INTERPRETATION: Bruno Olivier, Gabriella Lacono, Pierrot Garnier

CONSTRUCTION AND FIXTURES: Walter Gonzales, Amalgame - Elisabeth Houtart y Michel Vinck

SECOND STAGE DESIGN: Anne Masset, Vanina Bogaert, Sophie Ferro

STAGE MANAGER: Nicolas Olivier

CREATIVE TECHNICIANS: Gilles Brulard, Pierrot Garnier, Bruno Olivier

MUSIC: George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, Arvo Pârt, Michael Koenig Gottfried, John Cage, Carlos Paredes, Tchaikovsky, Jacques Prévert, Ligeti, Henryk Gorecki, George Gershwin

NARRATOR: Iván Fox (Spanish)

 

www.charleroi-danses.be