Vacuum
Concept and choreography: Philippe Saire
Choreography in collaboration with dancers: Philippe Chosson, Pep Garrigues
Dancers on tour : Gyula Cserepes, Lazare Huet
Stage device realisation: Léo Piccirelli
Sound design: Stéphane Vecchione
Technical director: Vincent Scalbert
Construction coordinator: Antoine Friderici
Construction: Cédric Berthoud
Stage management: Vincent Scalbert or Bastien Aubert (TBC)
Musical work: What Power Art Thou, drawn from Henry Purcell’s King Arthur, performed by Fink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ninja Tune, 2013
Coproduction: Théâtre National de Chaillot (Paris), La Bâtie-Festival de Genève
Support & partners: Ville de Lausanne, Canton de Vaud, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, Loterie Romande, Fondation de Famille Sandoz, Corodis, Le Romandie Rock Club, la Ménagerie de Verre dans le cadre du Studiolab.
Cie Philippe Saire is in permanent residency at Théâtre Sévelin 36, Lausanne.
The pieces in the Dispositifs series are based on spatial and luminous devices
and focus on the visual aspect as well as on the narrative and on movement. As such, they essentially combine visual arts with dance.
The stage device for Vacuum, which was developed progressively, occupies a very narrow space: two 1.2-metre neon lights float horizontallym above ground, one atop the other. Both tubes are oriented towards the audience, causing partial blindness and creating a black-hole effect between the two lights. The device makes it look as if the darkness swallows up and spits out the performers. It is a trick that could look like magic but which is used in a totally different manner here.
Vacuum generates impossible images and fantastic paintings, an interplay of bodies appearing and disappearing between black holes and dazzling lights.
This duo is the third part in a series of performances called Dispositifs (‘stage devices’), in convergence with visual arts. After Black Out (2011) and NEONS Never Ever, Oh! Noisy Shadows (2014), Vacuum explores a new aspect of our sensory perception through an optical illusion created with two neon tubes. In Black Out, the movements of the dancers drew shapes in some black substance on stage while the audience watched from above. NEONS then staged a couple dancing in a world of lights and shadows. Now, with this third piece, Saire explores further the visual perception of movement. The result is lyrical and inspiring, as it moves forward
through the history of art, from Renaissance paintings to photographic development.
This 25-minute long performance features a stage device that is easily transportable.
Furthermore, it includes the same cast as NEONS, meaning both can be programmed together.
Vacuum vzniklo v koprodukcii s /Vacuum is a coproduction with Paris’ Théâtre National de Chaillot and La Bâtie-Festival de Genève.
Cartographies
Movies
Cartographies is a project that was lead by Philippe Saire from 2002 to 2012 as a series of 11 “performances” throughout the city of Lausanne, Switzerland.
The aim was to search for new ways of printing bodies on landscapes and create fresh identities for urban spaces. Dance comes out of its usual places and meets the public in everyday spaces and situations.
In order to keep a permanent record of these ephemeral interventions in the cityscape, the work was filmed by film makers – Lionel Baier, Fernand Melgar, Bruno Deville, Kamal Musale, Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, Massimo Furlan, Mario del Curto, Alain Margot and Philippe Saire himself. Also written contributions by Luc Gwiazdzinski, Grégoire Junod, Laurent Matthey, Ola Söderström et Filippo Zanghì.
The videos have already been widely spread around the world, in festivals and cinemas.
Whole project includes the 11 short films. We will present : Cartographie 7, Cartographie 9, Cartographie 10 , Cartographie 11 .
