FALAISE / ALMADA FESTIVAL

Francesco Chiaro in Persinsala 17 Julho 2022 | notícia online

Following their previous play, Lá, French company Baro d’evel (Manouche for “For the love of God”) brings to Portuguese audiences its latest work, Falaise, a non-place in which Life itself flows freely, laughing at our earthly attempts at making sense of it all while everything comes crumbling down, and up.

Dark, bleak walls surround us. If it wasn’t for Camille Decourtye and Blaï Mateu Trias’s pretended clumsiness -the maladroitness typical of circus performances, with their fidgety movements, restless eyes and hands always grasping for air-, we could very well be in a Peeping Tom’s play, where movements become viscous and life an utter struggle. Indeed, Baro d’evel’s «total art» closely resembles some of the brightest examples of contemporary physical theatre, boasting extraordinary acrobatic prowess, incredible artistic versatility and a penchant for abstract expressionism, but with a twist. The Toulouse-based company singularity, as they themselves state, «is to incorporate the presence of animals in this quest. Our performance spaces are thought like caskets where the animals bring a spontaneous and intense emotion. The audience is penetrated by the presence of the animals, another perception of the representation begins with their appearance».

Falaise, a play for three women, five men, a horse and not less than twelve pigeons is a waking dream, a visual ode to Beckett, Tarkovski and Wenders, but also an homage to contemporary dance “moguls” like Pina Bausch or Wim Vandekeybus, mixed with beguiling somersaults and contortionisms, physical feats and cathartic falls. The story -if one must find a story in this surreal dreamscape- is that of Life itself, «worried. Fragile. Obstinate. Stubborn. Plural. She (life) is not quite finished. She still has things to say. She comes from far, far away. Or speaks for later. She’s not sure whether she has survived the disaster or if she is ahead of it. She just doesn’t know. One thing is certain though: she is trembling – with joy, tenderness, fear, and desire – desire to move forward, to not give in, to not go back, to find out how, to agonise, to blame, to be guilty, horribly guilty of being this hiccup of the world, she hesitates, she hesitates and doesn’t care, she seeks to assemble, she plays the roles, and then disturbs what was expected of her. Whatever. She’s shaking. Like she’s alive. After all, she is life itself. The one who insists».

And insist she does, repeating time and again her own unescapable circle of creation and destruction, rise and fall. By the time the play is over (that is, when lights are turned on and the audience leaves, given that, by representing our very own existence, the play can never truly end), the original landscape is completely tarnished by the passage of mankind, who leaves behind a sea of debris and material remains, but also that struggle of signifier and signified that we call Art, thus completing the grandiose metaphor that Baro d’evel so painstakingly put together for our sheer delight.

The show was played at
Centro Cultural de Belém – Main Auditorium
Praça do Imperio – Lisboa
Friday 15, 2022 at 21:00
Saturday 16, 2022 at 19:00

the Almada Festival presents
Falaise
by Baro d’evel

created by Camille Decourtye and Blaï Mateu Trias
performers Noëmie Bouissou, Camille Decourtye, Claire Lamothe, Blaï Mateu Trias, Oriol Pla, Julian Sicard, Marti Soler, Guillermo Weickert, a horse and pigeons
set design Lluc Castells
costumes Céline Sathal
light design Adèle Grépinet
music Fred Bühl
co-produced by GREC 2019, Teatre Lliure, Théâtre Garonne, Malraux, ThéâtredelaCité, Pronomade(s) en Haute-Garonne, CNAR, L’Archipel, MC93, CIRCa, Auch Gers, Le Grand T, le Parvis, Les Halles de Schaerbeek, L’Estive, Cirque Jules Verne, Scène nationale d’Albi, Bonlieu, Teatros del Canal, Le domaine d’O, Houdremont, 2 Pôles Cirque en Normandie, La Brèche à Cherbourg, Cirque-Théâtre d’Elbeuf
supported by Institut Français
co-presented by Centro Cultural de Belém