Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY.
May 3, 2023.
Dimanche, a collaborative manufacturing of Cie Focus and Cie Chaliwaté, transforms Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s Fishman Space right into a thawing ice cap, a modest front room –– sweltering and tempestuous by turns –– and most remarkably a vivid underwater fallout (made doable by Zoé Tenret’s phantasmagoric scenography and Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin’s genius lighting design) replete with extremely reasonable fish snacking on floating toast, a fluorescent ticking alarm clock, and a smack of jellyfish expertly articulated by the actors’ palms. Written, directed, and carried out by Julie Tenret, Sicaire Durieux, and Sandrine Heyraud, the present’s use of experimental clowning, low-fi results, puppetry, and movie converge to create a cohesive and satisfying work of bodily theater that traverses the up to date local weather disaster.
The present opens with a frosty man in a winter coat sitting inventory nonetheless at a white desk clothed in fir timber, miniature homes, and blue mild. A second actor materializes behind the desk, driving a toy van over the snowscape and the person’s physique. Before we all know it, the unique actor “drives” the transfigured desk alongside his two counterparts, Paul Simon booming from the automobile radio; he holds the wheel whereas one passenger operates the windshield wipers and one other holds up the sunshine and air freshener. They bounce the bumps within the street, sometimes various the dimensions and rhythm of their jounce to point a pothole or hump, whereas finishing up basic little automobile duties like consuming, consuming, and switching seats with each other. Rather than counting on overdone pantomime, the scene’s humor lies in its relatability. These “car rides” –– together with the present’s filmed reporting sequences and obtrusive pure disasters –– function anchor factors all through the piece.
The music muffles because the home windows roll up (the peerlessly timed soundscore by Brice Cannavo melts seamlessly into the equal components absurd and poignant world of Dimanche), and the three get out clumsily with movie gear. Their impotent makes an attempt at reporting on the arctic setting they’ve arrived in are quickly interrupted by the ice cracking beneath their toes. When the cameraman goals down, his toes all of a sudden seem on the projector with actual ice beneath them and he falls into the water. The juxtaposition of the suspension of disbelief required by the set and the actual footage (credited to Tristan Galand) strikes the viewers as humorous, a humor shortly displaced by the somber tone of the following scene; a lifelike polar bear puppet emerges from what initially seemed to be a giant snow pile, its cub peeping out between its legs. We see not one of the polar bear’s implied ferocity, and are as an alternative confronted by its tender maternity. The windswept soundscape and reasonable motion of the puppets (created by Waw ! Studios / Joachim Jannin et Jean-Raymond Brassinne and excellently manipulated by the performers) evoke the distinctive sublimity that solely nature appears in a position to supply. Then the iceberg cracks, the cub floats away, and the mama bear roars us right into a blackout.
The curtains open on a front room full of electrical followers, the scene linked with what got here earlier than by the use of a information report concerning the demise of the videographer taking part in on an old style TV. A life-sized puppet of an previous lady (managed by an actor with an arm by one sleeve and the opposite manipulating its head by grabbing its hair) stutters down through a malfunctioning stair raise. She hobbles over to an armchair, places her toes (her toes and the actor’s are one and the identical) in an ice bucket, and begins listening to an opera file through over-ear headphones. Meanwhile, foofaraw ensues on the kitchen desk. Cereal grains and teabags blow within the gust of a fan and the room begins to soften from the warmth; the coat rack sags, the husband’s chair bends backward and the desk warps, however the actors settle for this as mere inconvenience, providing one another cheeky gestures of approval from the ludicrous positions the rubbery furnishings places them in. Even the vinyl file turns flaccid.
Additional scenes centered round maternal, naturalistic puppets recurrently intersect this human narrative, the worlds of animals and people colliding most dramatically when the contorted, storm-sloshed physique of a giant chicken bursts by the window in a match of feathers, bringing the excessive winds of the storm in with it. Upon confirming the chicken useless, the somber couple (whose mannerisms and ease are fairly endearing) carries it offstage, the husband reentering seconds later in excessive spirits with a Thanksgiving turkey fashion platter. In these apocalyptic circumstances, can we blame him? The spouse blows in sporting a glittery crimson costume, and when she pours the wine it blows previous the glass and onto the person’s face. While this blustery charade actually has its place within the present, it lasts longer than mandatory and feels a bit on the nostril, particularly after comparable situations in Charlie Chaplin’s movie, Gold Rush, in addition to Gabriela Carrizo’s dance theater piece, The Missing Door. That the characters apparently don’t assume to maneuver their dinner desk out from in entrance of the shattered window and into the shelter of the remainder of the home may allude to humanity’s cussed obliviousness to take seemingly easy steps towards averting the local weather disaster.
When a tsunami (achieved through projection) thrust us underwater, even time turns liquid in order that we’re caught off guard when the ultimate reporter paddles in. (And stunned that she’s nonetheless alive.) Her digicam is tied to the entrance of her boat and he or she fishes family objects from the water. A low battery message pops up, the digicam beeps, and darkness swallows the theater.
Despite its secular content material, between the present’s title (which implies Sunday in French), its triadic construction, and its apocalyptic prognostication, my thoughts couldn’t assist however wander towards Christianity. Is this the day of relaxation we’ve earned for ourselves in any case our arduous work destroying the planet?
It’s additionally price noting that Dimanche is the title of a 1960 work by French artist Yves Klein. An early instance of conceptual artwork that took the type of a one-day newspaper designed as an alternative choice to the common Sunday paper, it included Klein’s manifesto, Theatre du Vide (Theater of the Void) and his well-known photograph, Leap Into The Void.
By Charly Santagado of Dance Informa.
