Between feverish homage and tonic truth

A. Dreyfus vs revival P. Bausch

One night, a deadly, claudy reenactment of a Pina Bausch ballet. The administration of the theater in distress that receives them: no better. The grotesque on all sides is at its height. Whining and beauty are supposed to come together in a supreme tribute to toil.

A few days later, the opposite.

A big gap between the measured feverishness of the "professionals" and the authenticity of a trio, poet, musician, dancer. Who is right? The latter, of course. A Bic man with a helmet on his head goes around the Generator room on a scooter before liquefying into incongruous movements, childish hesitations, vocal squeals thrown in pure loss.

She, Anne Dreyfus, the good man Bic, sometimes knocks in the ear of the poet Pennequin, massive as a lump of butter, sheltered from the sun. He seems to see only a drop, the eye at an infinitely small distance from the paper he is holding in his hand. With an enormous voice, he orders his words to line up in tight rows as they come out of his mouth. JF Pauvros' crochet music maintains the coherence of the whole, scratching the air and the ambient listening.

In the theatre of degradation... we go to great lengths to chain together beautiful images, in homage, always in homage. Here, necessity is not the law.

The spectators installed as in a UGC complex are reminiscent of those of the 1950s. All blissful and attentive to the aura of the great deceased creator, all they need are the 3D glasses to illustrate the perfect submission to the beautiful show. Everywhere, they are searching for relief, the thread of the subliminal narration intertwined in a brocade embroidered with pearls. That's it for them, a beautiful show it seems: effort.

At the Generator, you don't feel the effort because there is no effort. No, the power of the room on the same level without any fuss, you don't make any effort, but you put strength into it. Not demonstrative force - it is not a military parade that takes place there - but the strength to believe in simple acts that collide like debris carried by the wave. There is no room for order. Also, nothing is told there, except the persistence of images and gestures that it would be naively hasty to judge light.

But here is the naivety, the professional spectator has made an armour, a standard worthy of the manifestation for all, degrading for the millions of years of evolution that overhang us. "The bullshit of one + the bullshit of the other = the bullshit of the future. An equation that can easily be declined at will, which applied to the great show gives us: "talent + effort = beautiful" where the result, "beautiful" can in turn be declined, in "deep", "meritorious" or "brilliant"! "for a greater ease of access and understanding by all.

"Great! ", that sums it up; it saves on eyestrain. It's practical and it avoids stretching. "Magnificent", "Sumptuous", "Sublime", that's something else. It's just as much dedicated to excess, but it's more characteristic of the emotion felt; it doesn't refer to the power to do, and therefore to dominate. Eternally, this is what the crowd will applaud at the end of the high masses ("Spectacular demonstration aiming to weld the homogeneity of a group" according to Larousse.), the glory of him or her who knew how to dominate us.

De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine " " " From the depths I cried out to you, Lord ", two dots, open quotation marks " Bravo! ", one might add.

Pina's children's finale, no I didn't see it, preferring to go for a beer at intermission and never come back. I knew too well, as I suppose everyone here does, that no matter how many walls of fake cinder blocks fall, they can only promise spectacular ecstasy without the shadow of a real derision other than malignity. intelligent who aspires to sign a work. Dominate, dominate. We were already there, there's no need to go on.

In Gentilly, nice at the antipodes of the vehement centre of Paris under its beautiful lights and its beers at 6 euros, never resounds the finale otherwise than under a stunning hullabaloo of happy legs that spread 180° for themselves, for the incredible pleasure they have to show their owners that they can do it.

It's not for us, the public, to be flabbergasted to see them bloom anarchically like poppies in a spring field. No, with a disarming childhood, the legs stretch out and open wide, just to get away from the busts and take flight until all we see is them, scattered, squeaking their freedom like seagulls laughing in all directions.

Heaviness of the orchestrated practice, which wants to signify with elegance and finesse, its maturity on the great and proud stage of our beloved capital; social movements of all kinds, artistic, political, concerned by the drama of the world and the lessons to be drawn from it, drama of the relationship between man and woman, drama of social precariousness ... yes, yes, so what? I think we know all that and shamelessly repeating it does not prevent the ebaubi spectator from giving alms of one euro to a homeless person passing through as soon as he joins the big mouth of the metro. What remains of these beautiful images? A bit of self-satisfaction for being and having been.

Elsewhere, we may still be smiling at the thought that we might try to do the same, the big gap. Who then will really have told us about dancing?

Transcript of an audio memo recorded at the exit of the Théâtre de la Ville on 23/06/2014 :

Pine to mouth

I'm so sick of your actor's face, your dancer's posture, and the fact that you can bust my balls with your black techno shirt. Shit, a thousand times shit. We know you can dance. Acting, no. You're as bad as 12 pigs. No emotion, no fragility, no humor. You smile when you have to smile, and they do it, assholes. A big ugly tray. Why do you have me sitting there? Why don't you do your bullshit skills in the lobby so I can just visit you? Just let me come by and get out of here. I don't care if you look like a hairpin with that stern Berlin look you've seen, seen it 10,500 times. I don't care about your men in suits and ties who move around like conservatory virgins who think you have to burst in with horse hysteria to show up on stage with emotion in your throat and legs and ditto to leave the set. Ah, you feel it, you idiot, don't you? You want to tell us, you want us to witness your inner beauty, your devoted seriousness? Your Styrofoam wall with 100,000 balls breaks down... Wow! Woof! Woof! Mdr! But it's the fucking TDV that would have to burn down for something to happen. Fuck those dancers, actors, footballers who think they're teaching us something when they make a gesture that's so right and determined, perfect or pseudo hesitant, assumed or shitty. Fuck, you can't see anything, you don't know anything despite hectolitres of technique. It will always be approximate. You don't know shit, actually. Ah context, context, you'll always have us. That's the culture to save? This is the art to defend? This is the argument of artists? Beautiful things well done in a lousy head. "But if you don't like it, you can leave," right? "You don't have to go to the theatre! It's like, "You don't have to stay in France!" "That's what FN sounds like, the arguments of professional worshippers. No, Théâtre de ta Ville or not, I'm at home and fuck you. If you still had 2 grams of punk in your face, you'd shit on your ecstasy, believer of my two. Of course everything is a bit emotional on a stage, if you're not too stupid in what you come to claim. Amateurs, professionals, legless... who cares? The important thing on a stage is to just walk across it. If you settle down like you're at home, you're fucked. He might want to evict you like a usurper landlord or just get the hell out of there. Be a light feather, a lame joke, a pontificating censor, but trust me, never tell us why you're here. Then you'll always fly away. Theater, so close to the theater and thinking about it in the center, you empty my heart and mind. You bore me in the great widths of your stage. Why all this finally Pina? To be erected one day as a monument of the Republican Reich of Culture? Even if it's not your fault, fuck off Pina and sleep in peace. Game over. Everything's off. The game has to be restarted.

DN