Falaise
Baro d’evel
www.barodevel.com
Dance, theatre, circus
Country: France-Spain
Approx. length: 1 h 45 min (no intermission)
Year of production: 2019
Languages: French, English and Spanish (without subtitles)
Recommended ages: 8 and over
Premiere in the Community of Madrid
With support from the Institut Français
Authors, directors: Camille Decourtye and Blaï Mateu Trias
On stage: Noëmie Bouissou, Camille Decourtye, Claire Lamothe, Blaï Mateu Trias, Oriol Pla, Julian Sicard, Marti Soler, Guillermo Weickert, one horse and pigeons
Collaboration with staging: María Muñoz – Pep Ramis / Mal Pelo
Collaboration with dramaturgy: Barbara Métais-Chastanier
Scenography: Lluc Castells with help from Mercè Lucchetti
Musical and sound creation: Fred Bühl
Light creation: Adèle Grépinet
Costume designer: Céline Sathal
Recorded music: Joel Bardolet
Head stage manager: Sébastien Reyé
Lighting: Nicolas Zuraw or David Demené
Stage managers: Mathieu Miorin, Benjamin Porcedda and/or Cédric Bréjoux
Sound: Fred Bühl or Rodolphe Moreira
Animal handlers: Francis Tabouret or Perrine Comellas
Technical direction: Nina Pire
Special direction / Promotion: Laurent Ballay
Production administrator: Caroline Mazeaud
Production manager: Pierre Compayré
Communications director: Ariane Zaytzeff
Production: Baro d’evel
Co-production: GREC 2019 Festival de Barcelona, Teatre Lliure de Barcelone, Théâtre Garonne, scène européenne, Malraux scène nationale Chambéry Savoie, ThéâtredelaCité – CDN Toulouse Occitanie, Pronomade(s) en Haute-Garonne, CNAR, L’Archipel, scène nationale de Perpignan, MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis, CIRCa, Pôle National Cirque, Auch Gers Occitanie, Le Grand T, théâtre de Loire-Atlantique, le Parvis, scène nationale Tarbes-Pyrénées, Les Halles de Schaerbeek – Bruxelles, L’Estive, scène nationale de Foix et de l’Ariège, le cirque Jules Verne, pôle national cirque, Amiens, la scène nationale d’Albi dans le cadre du soutien du FONDOC, Bonlieu, scène nationale d’Annecy, La Comunidad de Madrid (Teatros del Canal), le domaine d’O (Montpellier 3M), Houdremont, scène conventionnée de la Courneuve, 2 Pôles Cirque en Normandie / La Brèche à Cherbourg – Cirque-Théâtre d’Elbeuf.
Project funded by the cross-border cooperation project PYRENART, within the framework of the Interreg V-A Spain-France-Andorra programme POCTEFA 2014-2020 – European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Residences:: Le Théâtre Garonne, scène européenne, Les Pronomade(s) en Haute-Garonne CNAR, CIRCa, PNC, Auch Gers Occitanie, ThéâtredelaCité – CDN Toulouse Occitanie, Le Théâtre de Lorient, La Brèche, PNC de Cherbourg, L’Avant-Scène Cognac.
With creation assistance from the DGCA, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, the Regional Council of Haute-Garonne, the Toulouse City Council and the Government of Catalonia, Institut Català de les Empreses Culturales.
The company is subsidised by the Ministry of Culture and Communication – Regional Department of Cultural Affairs of Occitania / Pyrenees – Mediterranean and the Occitania / Pyrenees – Mediterranean Region.
Falaise is an unclassifiable ceremony via which – claim Mateu and Decourtye – they want to ‘take viewers through an interior labyrinth, a lucid dream’. To this end, they worked with set designer Lluc Castells to create a space that opened onto several planes and where the characters could leap through them into different places in history. Like in Là, cracks open in the walls through which they enter and exit, through which they are born and die and reborn once again. They once again worked with María Muñoz and Pep Ramis, from the company Mal Pelo, for the staging, and have teamed up with two new allies who now, from the inside, seem to have been predestined to work alongside the troupe: Oriol Pla and Guillermo Weickert. And there are those white pigeons and Txapakan, the white horse that plays, trots and stretches out around Camille.
It would be hard not to fall head over heels in love with a show as moving as this, so universal and so very human, although this may sound like empty rhetoric. They talk about this topic with me when the performance has ended. It is two hours with as much virtuosity and purity as imperfection and transgression. Here the body is the word, art is reason, time is contorted and life plays out like a little girl crossing a river on a thin branch. This girl possesses Camille Decourtye, with all her fragile strength – pardon the paradox – from the time the function starts and she tells us everything is going to be okay. She possesses her and squeezes the hearts of all of us watching the ritual with open mouths, the magnetism making us peer over the cliff with them. As a French critic wrote, ‘Will humans be able to withstand her fall? In a metaphorical waltz, extraordinary artists (replete with a horse) challenge the announced catastrophe.’
