Seven Swiss theater and dance companies will perform at the Festival d’Avignon this summer. The selection, which includes three Geneva women, is very centered on dance this year. The event runs until July 26.
With “Grand Épan” at the Théâtre du Train Bleu, Charlotte Dumartheray will lead the dancer Kiyan Khoshoie in a hybrid solo at the crossroads of dance and theater that questions the limits of artistic practice: those of the body, devotion and power. .
Ruth Childs, an American who dances for French-speaking choreographers, will perform a “Fantasia” dedicated to the classical composers who enchanted her childhood. The author Olivia Csiky Trnka will be invited to publicly read an unpublished work born from her pen.
The Geneva dancer Kiyan Khoshoie in “Grand Ecart”. [Philippe Leone – DR]
A French-speaking edition
Four other titles, again from French-speaking Switzerland, complete the menu. A graduate of the Manufacture in Lausanne, Coline Bardin will evoke in “La Mâtrue – Farewell to the farm” the rural world in France where she grew up. For children, the Lausanne quintet Prédüm will present “C’est vos affaires!”, an improvisation with a doll, a candlestick and a handkerchief.
“It’s your business!” is the third production of the Petit Théâtre de Lausanne, which Laurence Perez has selected after “1984-2045” and “Hocus Pocus” by Philippe Saire. The latter counts “among the great successes that we have known in Avignon”, explained in May the head of the Swiss selection, Laurence Perez, to Keystone-ATS.
The bet of Avignon, since 2015
Laura Gambarini will play alone on stage, under the baton of Manu Moser, “The Game of Nibelungen”, the entire epic which inspired the “Ring” in Wagner. Finally, the “Dedication” by Romane Peytavin and Pierre Piton will unveil a choreographic jukebox.
It was in 2015 that Pro Helvetia and Corodis – Commission Romande de diffusion des spectacles – bet on the City of the Popes. In 2016, Laurence Perez launched “Conference of things”, this whimsical encyclopedia imagined by the French-speaking director François Gremaud. Since then, it has been played nearly 400 times.
The phenomenon will happen again in 2019 with “Phèdre!” by the same François Gremaud. The same year, the newspaper “Liberation” devoted three pages to Swiss artists on stage in Avignon.
Fight against prejudice
However, the game was not immediately won. “We had to fight against French prejudices, considering Switzerland in terms of the arts as a country that is a little smooth”, recognizes Laurence Perez. Who had to ward off other attacks: “I was told that we were going to present the first year all that the Swiss scene had of interest, but that then the flow would quickly dry up given the smallness of the country. “
The Swiss selection has also succeeded in bringing German-speaking artists to this high place of the French-speaking world, such as Zurich’s Daniel Hellmann in 2016 or Bernese Omar Ghayatt in 2017. Bilingual, they performed in French.
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76th Festival d’Avignon, from July 7 to 26, 2022.