MONJOUR
“Overcoming the border between you and me: getting to meet you, to never get lost in the crowd again. […] Finding a place where being together is possible. […] Something that will involve becoming alive with one another, and holiday will be possible”. J. Grotowski (« Jour Saint » et autres textes)
MONJOUR is a performative device that focuses on the reflection about power and about a game of manipulation between the performer and the audience.
MONJOUR is a “contemporary cartoon”, made of bodies in flesh and blood, led by Silvia Gribaudi’s humor with Matteo Maffesanti’s visual complicity, by Francesca Ghermandi’s drawings, Leonardo Benetollo’s stage light design, and by acrobatic performers: Riccardo Guratti, Timothée-Aïna Meiffren, Salvatore Cappello, Nicola Simone Cisternino, and Fabio Magnani. What is the interdependence between the audience and the performers? What is the mutual responsibility between an audience member and an artist?
MONJOUR is a day to exist together in disorientation. But what are we ready to give as long as we can continue to exist?
MONJOUR consists of 2 dancers, 1 clown/actor and 2 acrobats. The work includes choreographic practices on the relationship between body and comedy, between drawings and aesthetics in the relationship between performers and audience.
In MONJOUR a director/performer is in a dialogue from the audience with the performers, destructuring and reconstructing the images the audience sees during the performance, and creating a physical, comic, and choreographic virtuosity. The mise-en-scène, lit up by artist Francesca Ghermandi’s pop drawings, marks the boundaries between artists and director, disrupts orders and roles, becomes a scream that focuses on human fragility as a strong point, fallibility as revolutionary power, the unexpected as the possibility of seeing beyond the limits.
“With overwhelming humour, Gribaudi exposes the relationship between the two poles of artistic creation, reminding us of the inescapable importance of the fruition dimension.” Andrea Bonzi in Startagemmi.it
“In Monjour Silvia Gribaudi wants to connect the stage, a kind of circus, and the audience. She is in the auditorium, with the spectators, and from time to time joins her team on stage, as a sort of mock ‘director’, to show us even more clearly what she wants to offer us. A little too often? Without too many twists and turns?Sometimes it’s a vague idea that we let emerge, but discard immediately, before it even tries to get comfortable. And that’s just the right thing to do.” Nicolas Brizault in unfauteuilpourlorchestre.com
“The audience is once again enthusiastic. The show is enjoyable, we laugh at lightness, at funny movements, at teasing each other a little, at nakedness revealed and concealed, and at that nothingness of which comedy and belly laughs are sometimes made. Our anxieties become clownish mockery, and laughter a regenerating choral action, in which the echo of a childlike pleasure resounds.” Rita Borga in klpteatro.it
credits
Choreography Silvia Gribaudi
Animated drawings by Francesca Ghermandi
Performers Salvatore Cappello, Nicola Simone Cisternino, Silvia Gribaudi, Riccardo Guratti, Fabio Magnani e Timothée- Aïna Meiffren
Dramaturgical advice Matteo Maffesanti
Artistic material created by Silvia Gribaudi, Salvatore Cappello, Nicola Simone Cisternino, Riccardo Guratti, Fabio Magnani e Timothée Aïna Meiffren
Light design and technical direction Leonardo Benetollo
Music Nicola Ratti, Gioachino Rossini
Production Zebra
Coproduction Torinodanza Festival / Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale, Teatro Stabile del Veneto Carlo Goldoni, Les Halles de Schaerbeek – Bruxelles
Supported by MiC – Ministero della Cultura, Italian Ministry of Cultural Affairs project realized within the frame of “Corpo Links Cluster” by Torinodanza Festival / Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale, Malraux scène nationale Chambéry et Savoie, Associazione Dislivelli and Université Savoie Mont Blanc, supported by the Cooperation programme PC INTERREG V A – Italy-France (ALCOTRA 2014-2020) with the support of Centro di Residenza Emilia-Romagna (L’arboreto Teatro Dimora | La Corte Ospitale), ARTEFICI. ResidenzeCreativeFvg/ArtistiAssociati, AMAT/Comune di Pesaro/Residenze Marche Spettacolo, ARMUNIA/Festival Inequilibrio, Lavanderia a Vapore/Centro di residenza per la danza, ATER Fondazione/Teatro Comunale Laura Betti di Casalecchio di Reno, IntercettAzioni – Centro di Residenza Artistica della Lombardia – progetto di Circuito CLAPS e Industria Scenica, Milano Musica, Teatro delle Moire, Zona K.
Duration 60 minutes
