The intimate brought into play

Four men and four women circulate around a frontier: demarcation line, edge of a ditch, starting-gate.  They are like the involuntary sentinels of a forbidden world or a universe that needs saving.  Undoubtably our own.

They don't know anymore.

They are very concretely there, but their presence seems uncertain; all that they accomplish will be marked by doubt or rather an irreparable suspicion: is it really them gathered there and for what reason?  Do they really exist or are they just the incarnation of some monstrous dreamer?  These questions are beyond them, they are like the blind, walking assuredly in the darkness.
The performance presents this unique situation: eight people in a line, who occupy  a specific space, without depth, who are as if magnetized by the simple fact of being together.  They begin by frequently changing places, but never use the space behind or in front of them and by doing so preserve the very graphic character of the ensemble.

This constraint orients all the movements and frames all the micro-situations which develop based on a principle of laying bare and of simultaneity.  The organization of what is visible and the immediacy of perception allow for a certain play of complexity and a very particular kind of agitation.
It is of course a question of the group which is posed here, that of the impossibility and necessity of the community.  What is it that unifies us, in spite of or because of our differences?  For what reason are isolation and solitude indispensable for the solidarity of the ensemble?
The reflection upon or metaphor of social relations is constantly nourished by the fact of the intimate being brought into play, in a atmosphere where humor and peculiarity mingle.

 

^{Patrick Bonté • 2009}