2023-07-19 17:07:59
A triumph at the Festival off d’Avignon, the hilarious choreographic farce “Simple” subjects three creatures from the most exuberant Tex Avery to an implacable superior rhythm.
Bip-Bip and Coyote or Bugs Bunny in the 40s and 50s in the United States. The mad, mad, mad College in Japan in the 80s. The Minions, in France, in the 2010s. And suddenly, on a stage at the festival off d’Avignon, this tall dancer with yellow hair who steps forward, the eyes of a rabbit caught in the headlights of the car, frightened then amazed to see his sex molded in a jerkin beat time, subjected to a sovereign infernal cadence. Here we are propelled, with Simple by Argentinian choreographer Ayelen Parolin, a little comic bomb of barely an hour, into the exuberant world of toons, in the phantasmagorical materiality of their bodies, and in the look they also offered on the existence, they who constantly speak to us of the mechanical perseverance of the social game and of an individual caught in a frenetic gear. The virtuoso creatures, on the set, do not take over from Tex Avery the logic of predation, devouring, pulverization, implosion. But it is here the same flexibility and fantastic adaptability of the body to its environment, the same capacity of the movement to regenerate itself at extreme speed.
It was rumored in the streets of Avignon that one of the nuggets of off was parodying contemporary dance, or more exactly the American “post-modern dance” of Merce Cunningham with its large graphic pleats molded into amazing clothes. The piece is actually more exciting than a rehash of Gad Elmaleh mocking the dance broadcast at night on Arte, or a comedy with irony heard, stuffed with private jokes for subscribers of the Théâtre de la Ville de Paris. Let’s say that the spectators can in any case go through this trip without reading any particular sarcasm. On the other hand, they would benefit from linking the experience with that of another extraordinary choreographic comedy, given a few streets away, also indebted to the burlesque of animation. In the ventriloquist farce Welcome, by Joachim Maudet, it is the impression that the dancers’ bodies have been hacked by a gang of Oompa-Loompas. In Simple, by Ayelen Parolin, it is also the story of a reversal: consciousness is no longer the motor of movement, the individual is on the contrary acted upon by the rest of his body, sometimes without consent.
Single by Ayelen Parolin, until December 19 at the Hivernales, Festival off d’Avignon and on tour from January 2024 in Dieppe, Calais, Strasbourg…Welcome by Joachim Maudet, until July 26 at the Train bleu, Avignon
#comic #bomb #cartoon #Merce #Cunningham #Liberation