The little nun on a scooter

I crossed her three days in a row on my way to the studio, the little nun on her scooter, nose to the wind, full sail ahead.  The triple repetition of the sign, the betrayal of Saint Peter at the rooster's call, forced me to continue the work at hand, a choreographic form that examined the stigmata of a childhood religion, catechism, religious knickknacks and some mystical momentum all mixed up together.

The result: violence and getting carried away, the obstinate pulsations of a bass guitar, a melting down, tiny prayers, signs, to make the sign, superstition, to make the sign three times, the eye of God is omnipresent, his ear also, useless to whisper, we cannot blasphemy a single thing
except in our thoughts.

So to protect oneself, the body divides itself, it calls to the earth which adds to its reality, its weight and a sky which lightens its heart: the feet thump heavily but the chest opens backwards in lascivious  ecstasy.

Thérèse de Lisieux was the inspiration behind all that, a little saint from Normandy, overflowing with humility and going mad waiting to join as soon as possible, she was 23 years old, her celestial fiancé.  The photo of Thérèse still stands on my make-up table, no matter the show we're performing, and that makes twenty-three years, I dive three times into her paper gaze, in order to give myself courage and intensity, twenty-three years that I close my eyes and let the ocular remanence happen: to see the negative of her image rise up and to absorb it.

Juste Ciel provided the opportunity early on to tour in exotic locations, which through the different cultures taught us that the body does still speak, that it sets in motion common ground, that its jigs are everywhere the same when they are nourished by intimate pulsations.  We can trust in it, in its energies and forms, provided we take the trouble to refine them.  And that if an obvious sense is not the same for everyone, we share the same flaws, the same little inner bouts of madness.

Nicole Mossoux, Etudes Théâtrales 49 • 2010