Monique by Alix Eynaudi

This article is still under construction.

Circumstances

Bruno Pocheron: Initially, I was not supposed to be part of the project. Late in the working process and close to premiere, Alix and her collaborators realized that the dramaturgy of the piece, the dance, the costumes-set and the music called for a strong lighting counterpoint, which was by then outlined but far from realized. I joined the project little more than one week before the premiere in Tanzquartier Wien, and set up to animate the lighting design, in relation to all the other elements at stake, and to partially synchronize light to music.
In that case, I enjoyed the feeling of focused emergency. I also enjoyed the fact that I could feel the lighting design being mine, under the (gentle, precise and minutious) influence of my colleagues, developing it on a ground they already laid .

The piece

Monique finds its inspiration in bondage turning its practice into choreographic instructions. Different bodily techniques are subverted, happily mixed up within the endless horizon of well-known images of the moving body such as gymnastics, contemporary dance, modern dance, sex games, a range of movement therapies…

Monique is a dance duet, starting as a set of quiet rituals and evolving into an homage to theater dance of the last century, whose emblematic costumes have been referenced by An Breugelmans’ creations. The aesthetic of Monique is found on the other side of the cliché, rather than stopping short of it, light, décor and music all shamelessly trample over ideas of good taste in a search for theatrical liberation.

Credits

Choreography: Alix Eynaudi
Performers: Alix Eynaudi & Mark Lorimer (replacement: Clinton Stringer, Matthieu Barbin)
Costume design: An Breugelmans
Collaborators: Lars Kwakkenbos, Karen Lambæk, Jean-Luc Plouvier , Bruno Pocheron, Herman Venderickx & Kris Verdonck
Photography: Alexander Meeus
Booklet design: Compagnie Paul Verrept
Production: Margarita Production for the Other vzw
Coproduction: Kaaitheater, Tanzquartier Wien , Buda Kortrijk, Workspace Brussels
With the support of: Pianofabriek, Wp Zimmer, Vooruit, the Flemish authorities & the network DEPARTS – the Culture Program of the European Commission.
Thanks to: Maîtresse Athena & Monique

Music:
Conlon Nancarrow Study for Player Piano No. 20, No. 15, No. 44
Gérard Pesson Nebenstück
Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 151: I. Maestoso – Poco piu moderato interpreted by the Berliner Philharmoniker, Krystian Zimerman & Sir Simon Rattle and arranged by Jean-Luc Plouvier

Lighting concept & lighting control

Bruno Pocheron: When I joined the work, the lighting concept had already been outlined by Alix, Herman Venderickx and Kris Verdonck, but was far away from being functionally implemented. Seeing in the rehearsals how much the dance related to the costume-objects of An Breugelmans, in a quasi-animist way, I decided to approach the lights in a similarly animist way, in relation to the dance, to the bodies, to the objects, to the space and to the music. I am talking here about some sort of two ways animism, or even multi-channel animism. For instance: the lightplot includes light as an object, a strong bulb hanging from the grid, put in motion / animated by the dancers; the movements of the lights animate the costumes-objects, change the perception of their shapes, colors, sizes etc.; the movement of the lights change the perception of the space; the music, its rythms, its tonalities control partially the movements of the lights. In general, I tried to go along with, and emphasize, the heterogeneous and non-hierarchical theatrical space proposed by the piece.
The light plot is split between light fixtures illuminating the room, and quite a concentration of light fixures dedicated to animating the old painted sky backdrop found at Brussels fleemarket, that became the thunderous horizon of the piece.
A big part of the work was to create a light partition, partly directly controlled by, partly just relating to the piece of music closing the piece: Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 151: I. Maestoso – Poco piu moderato.
For that I developed a flexible system, the backbone of which is a Lanbox LCX DMX controller, triggered by Cubase via MIDI, and by Pure Data via TCP/IP and UDP.

Light plot

Video documentation

https://vimeopro.com/brunopocheron/lightworks/video/433308308

password: brunopocheron

Premiere & tour dates

2012

-22nd and 23rd of June @ Tanzquartier Wien, Vienna, Austria

2013

-20th of April @ Xing, Bologna, Italy

-26th and 27th of September @ Kaaistudio’s, Brussels, Belgium

-16th and 17th of October @ Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona, Spain

-19th of November @ Next Festival, Kunstencentrum BUDA, Kortrijk, Belgium

2014

-15th and 16th of March @ Black Box Teater, Oslo, Norway

2015

- 17th and 19th of July @ Mumok in the frame of ImpulsTanz (Museum version)

-14th and 15th of August @ Le Far festival in Nyon, Switzerland

-20th and 21st of November @ Le Regard du Cygne, Paris