Bêtes de Foire
Bêtes de foire - petit théâtre de gestes
Travelling Circus
,
CANCELLED
Presentation
It starts with this… A woman's body, a man's body, and a ladder. How do you move beyond commonplace ideas of romantic relationships? This performance is built around the interconnected talents and techniques of Frédéric Arsenault and Mathilde Arsenault Van Volsem. The artists have placed the focus on bodies, using them as the raw material for the production: flesh, bone, fluids, with all their obvious similarities and undeniable differences. One of the challenges was to strip away the carnal or violent notions that often accompany the interactions between a man and woman on stage, and to favor connections based on strength, resistance, and fragility in order to expose the layers, links, weights, carries, balances, and physical cooperation. To ascend socially, spiritually? To work? To play. A ladder becomes a landscape for exploration and/or a disruptive element that offers a means of resisting temptations such as the lure of the void. The performance takes on the cadence of an absurd and repetitive cycle that plunges the bodies into a struggle that has no limits. It evoke memories of Sisyphus, who was burdened by the absurdity of our world and the hopeless race to escape inevitable death or finish interminable work.
Creation/performance Frédéric Arsenault and Mathilde Arsenault Van Volsem
Artistic consultant Pierre Déaux
Sound design Julien Vadet
Light design Michaël Philis
Construction Quentin Paulhiac
Thanks to Arnaud Anckaert, Alexandre Denis, and José Froment
Production/distribution Mélanie Vadet
Production/administration Emeline Févotte
Production Cie ALEAS
Residencies and co-productions Le Prato national circus arts center • Le Sirque national circus arts center (Nexon – Nouvelle Aquitaine) • La Verrerie d’Alès -national circus arts center (Occitanie) • Scène Nationale Aubusson • Theater op de Markt • Espace Culturel Le Chai - Carcassonne Agglo
Residencies CIRCa - national circus arts center (Auch Gers Occitanie)
Institutional support DGCA • DRAC Occitanie • Occitanie Rregion • Aude General Council
METEORE received a writing grant and production support from Beaumarchais/SACD
Programmed by the City of Martigues and Nickel Chrome
Frédéric Arsenault is a hand-to-hand acrobat who develops his work around lifts, touch, and a relation to the other. Along with Alexandre Fraye, he is the founder and the director of the Un Loup Pour l’Homme company. Having become more of a lifter than a flyer, he explores the physical capacities of the body and the infinite possibilities offered by different positions and materials.
Mathilde Arsenault Van Volsem studied contemporary dance at the CNSM in Paris. In 2008, she was recruited by the Moglice-Von Verx company, which was then directed by Chloé Moglia and Mélissa Von Vépy, for the performance I Look Up I Look Down… This was a key event in her professional development as she began to take an interest in the circus arts. She went on to work with Chloé Moglia and the Rhizome company in the performances Aléas, Rhizikon, and La Spire.
Frédéric and Mathilde met in 2002 while working on the performance Les Sublimes by Guy Alloucherie. Through their work and experiences, they have come to focus on the infinitely small, the art of simplicity, and the sensations evoked by physical work.
