«BLESS THE SOUND THAT SAVED A WITCH LIKE ME» | SPRING ROLLS
concept and choreography Benjamin Kahn
with Thi Mai Nguyen
music design Lucia Ross
light design Neills Doucet
assistant dramaturgy Théo Aucremanne
external eye Cherish Menzo
texts Benjamin Kahn inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Death Grips, Darek Jerman, MAVI
production companies Benjamin Kahn
thanks to Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Léonard Degoulet, Louis Daurat, Sati Veyrunes
co-production Klap Maison pour la danse, Charleroi Danse, Les Halles de Schaerbeek
with the support of Nuovi Mecenati – Franco-Italian Foundation for Contemporary Creation
In September 2020, a group of New Jersey mothers decided to gather in a park and shout at the top of their voices. They felt neglected in the fight against the pandemic. The act of collectively shouting, claiming space in front of their egos, and sharing this need in an informal gathering seemed to be a soothing practice in these desperate times. Following this first collective cry, the New York Times installed a public telephone line in the hope of serving those in need of a primal cry. One of the starting points of the research is the outcry of the social protest of these mothers and many other women in recent decades.
«Bless the Sound that Saved a Witch like me» is written in the plural, to emphasise the diversity of realities and the infinitely different cries that coexist in and around us. There is this intimate, existential cry and the public cry, from personal to collective urgency. There is in the writing the solo and the chorus, like a solitude marked by all struggles. Crossed by the complexity of their inseparable co-existences, «Bless the Sound that Saved a Witch like me» seeks to invest the boundaries between the intimate and the collective and the possibility of a necessary liberation.
‘Bless the Sound that Saved a Witch like me’ is like a cry of alarm, this time in the context of the geopolitical, ideological and ecological crisis we are currently experiencing. It voluntarily disassociates itself from the perspective of a ‘possible future’ in order to confront a possible and urgent present, with the desire to rethink a space of representation in a more radical and immediate relationship with the audience, to propose a form that is less intellectual than instinctive, an experience that cannot yet be articulated.
Viewing is recommended for audiences aged 12 and under; please note: loud sounds, stroboscopic effects, use of smoke, partly naked bodies (topless).
From 7 p.m. in the theatre APERITIF by the Renken Association
