Kassel/Athens/Paris. A triangle. A tripod. Moving backwards and forwards, there and back, beween the surface and the depths. 

Erecting  buildings with no foundations, listening to the ruins, summoning the  gods and goddesses, preparing ourselves for oracles and fighting against  their revelations, breaking through the marble’s glossy lustre,  regurgitating the fascist brown plague, what do I know ? 

Kassel/Athènes. These cities are not my cities. I have no grasp of either of their languages.

And yet I do not  feel like a foreigner, just a passenger. On the scale of an individual I  am a comfortable migrant, a sort of middle-class, bohemian French  woman. Nothing, except for my birth certificate, betrays my migration. I  am one of the few who has allowed myself to surrender the full powers  bestowed to me, in order to live freely. I have taken on the role of the  weak, yet I inherited the chromosomes of kings. I have chosen to take  on the stubborn role of « the opiniated one », to try and make others  understand the necessity of seeing the body as malleable matter. I  migrate from one status to another, requesting that my sentence be  reduced… In this new life, I move forward every day, balancing on  emerging stepping stones, swaying from one step to the next, without  knowing whether my stepping-stones will give way and betray me ! 

Learning is less  conflictual than unlearning, of this I am sure. During an endless  adolescence, I was forced to tailor my behaviour, my actions and my  attitude, to conform with my appearance. The woman I kept secretly  hidden away eventually turned me into an adult. Learning to be one’s sex  is easy, it’s just a method of fitting people in, or a way of knowing  how to fit in. I broke the chain, I pushed the boat away from the  riverbank, to drift free. I like soft floors because when in contact  with them, it’s not the body fitting the form of the floor, but the  floor fitting the shape of the body. And yet I am attracted to mineral  substances. They scratch my skin and spill my blood. I am full of blood,  full of anger contained beneath my skin. Blood does not have borders,  or at least, not the same borders. My country is B+. You can’t read this  in my face. Only the B+ people know they come from the same place. At  Kassel/Athens/Paris, the B+ people don’t know each other, they don’t  speak the same language, but at least they know they are important to  each other. On this level, identity is an irrefutable piece of machinery  which never lies.  

What makes me  write ? … The misery pouring out of dispossessed populations. The  sadness of bodies in contradiction with themselves, caught between their  desire for individual freedom and society’s approval and affirmation. I  am searching for the smell which identifies them. I immerse myself in  the flock’s sweat as they struggle to stay alive, whilst the  executioners tighten the enclosure of power they hold in their hands.  Like you, I inherited Europe’s history of conflict. The blood is now  hazy vapour, but like a volcano which builds up its magma reserves, a  well is filling up, silently. A new era of chaos is in preparation, or  maybe it just never stopped growing… 1971, 1986, 1989, 2001, 2015.  Birth, Tchernobyl, the Fall of the Wall, the Patriot Act, the end of  democratic choice in Greece. 

My train of thought is a jungle which I am trying to tame and reclaim.

Immoral Tales – Part one: The Mother House

So that the  Allied troops fighting against the Axis partners could engage their  troops on European soil, they employed the defence strategy of carpet  bombing. This strategy, used on both sides, turned out to be an  unprecedented human tragedy for all of Western Europe. Entire cities  were wiped out, burying their inhabitants beneath the rubble. My  maternal grandfather was one of these victims when Nantes was carpet  bombed by the Allies in 1943. During my childhood, the image and  consequences of bombs did not seem real to me ; bombs were just the  stuff of fantasy, as they were for many children. It was much later in  my life, when I realised we were not going to lay flowers at the grave  of my grandfather but were instead going to visit a faceless mass grave,  that I understood the terrible infamy of bombs. Maybe it was at that  moment my mind stumbled across the words « Marshall Plan », the program  set up to rebuild Europe : organise mass destruction and then manage the  reconstruction of war-devastated cities, following the model of a  re-fabricated house and a rewritten urban development plan.

Build a  « Marshall » village out of made-to-measure cardboard, the same way we  put up a series of tents for refugees. Just here, beneath a seemingly  unthreatening cloud.

A simple,  repetitive gesture, like a robot. Spead out, trace, cut, assemble, put  in place, then start all over again. Everything seems perfect, except  for that cloud, which looks like it’s getting bigger, thicker and  darker. Maybe a bolt of lightening, a gentle breeze, then eventually a  series of heavy raindrops, a shower, maybe even a rainstorm with  torrents of water ! The Marshall village collapses, despite the energy  used up trying to save it. It turns into mush, a sticky mess in which  bodies drown…

Phia Ménard

Source : Maison de la danse

Phia Ménard is an author, performer, scenographer, director and juggler. It was in 1991 that she began to train to the Arts and especially to the juggling and the actor’s movement. She became a student with Jérôme Thomas, learning the techniques of juggling and composition. She integrates the company on the creation « Hic Hoc ». With this team she traveled to several continents, learning to be an interpreter, improviser and creator of several shows of the company until 2003: « Le socle » (The base) choreography by Cécile Bornes, « Le banquet » (The banquet), "Hioc", « 4 », « qu'on en finisse une bonne fois pour toutes… » (Let's finish it once and for all…).

Meanwhile, she meets Hervé Diasnas and Valérie Lamielle, follows the teachings of her dance practice and interprets two pieces: "The tattooed page" and "Badaboum".

She founded the Non Nova Company in 1998 and began to write her own plays. It was with the solo, «Ascenseur, fantasmagorie pour élever les gens et les fardeaux », created in 2001, that she will be recognized as an author and supported for her singular and personal approach. His company became associate artist for three seasons at the National Scene Le Carré at Château Gontier (2003/2006). She develops with the teams of Non Nova and the Scène Nationale, a work on the visibility of the artist's approach and various experiments. The « Zapptime, the awakened dream of a zapper », will take place during this period, the "Jongleur pas confondre" show with Jean-Michel Guy (sociologist), "Fresque et sketches 2nd round", and off-piste events: « Est-il vraiment sérieux de jongler ? » (Is it really serious to juggle?), « Ursulines Dance Floor », « Ursulines Mushroom Power ». In 2005, she was invited by Jean Blaise to the Lieu Unique, Scène Nationale de Nantes for « Zapptime # remix ». Follow « Touch It » and « Doggy Bag ». From 2008, it develops the concept of I.C.E. (Complementary Tangibility of Elements) with the creation of "P.P.P. "At the Subsistances de Lyon and « L’après-midi d’un foehn Version 1 » at the Museum of Natural History in Nantes. She collaborates and performs the "Iceman" performance with Collectif La Valise for the film « Coyote pizza ». In response to the invitation of the SACD and the Festival d'Avignon 2010, she wrote « Black Monodie » with the sound poet Anne James Chaton. In 2011, she creates the wind parts, « L’après-midi d’un foehn » and « VORTEX ».

Source: Biennale de la danse de Lyon

En savoir plus

cienonnova.com

Born in 1977, Fabien Plasson is a video director specialized in the field of performing arts (dance , music, etc).

During his studies at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (joined in 1995) Fabien discovered video art. He was trained by various video artists (Joel Bartoloméo Pascal Nottoli , Eric Duyckaerts , etc).
He first experimented with the creation of installations and cinematic objects.

From 2001 to 2011, he was in charge of Ginger & Fred video Bar’s programming at La Maison de la Danse in Lyon. He discovered the choreographic field and the importance of this medium in the dissemination, mediation and pedagogical approach to dance alongside Charles Picq, who was a brilliant video director and the director of the video department at that time.

Today, Fabien Plasson is the video director at La Maison de la Danse and in charge of the video section of Numeridanse.tv, an online international  video library, and continues his creative activities, making videos of concerts, performances and also creating video sets for live performances.

Sources: Maison de la Danse ; Fabien Plasson website

More information: fabione.fr

Founded in 1998 by Phia Ménard with the founding precept that we don't invent anything, we just see it differently: Non nova, sed nove.

The company has been based in Nantes since it was founded. Its head office is a creative space that includes a rehearsal studio, construction workshop, costume workshop, set storage and offices. The aim of this space is to enable the Company to carry out preparatory research and create its work.

The Company's multidisciplinary projects bring together artists, technicians and thinkers from a wide range of backgrounds and experience. It is not a collective but a professional team led by Phia Ménard and Claire Massonnet.

Source: Cie Non Nova