FEAR, VIOLENCE AND POWER

In this group piece, Christian and François Ben Aïm draw on and reinvent the fairy tale to help them investigate contemporary life.

Like escapees from classic fables, a variety of legendary characters invade the stage and coexist in this surreal fable. The fairy tale characters are updated so that they can become an extension of us all and of our inner reality.

Their excesses enable the choreographers to explore human emotions and probe the dark side of our human nature. Christian and François Ben Aïm thus explore the themes of fear, violence and power by examining how we all react to them. Often addressed in literature and fairy tales, these subjects are also recurring themes in the choreographers’ work.

The choreographers give rise to an unusual universe of strange beauty, where nothing is really what it seems.

UNUSUAL AND STRANGE

Throughout the piece, the viewer oscillates between dream and reality. Reality is continually subverted and disrupted by the superimposition and surreal arrangement of the events represented. Different dimensions and proportions appear alongside each other: the infinitely small and very large, the multiplication of characters and unity.

The dancers embody this strangeness in choreographic roles that exude offbeat attitudes and behaviours. The moves are unstructured, engaged and naïve, sweet and deformed, with an uncertain rhythm, monstrous jerks and absurd dance steps.

The concept of metamorphosis, which is at the core of the piece, also drives this subversion. We witness various transformations, from princess to Little Red Riding Hood, from the Big Bad Wolf to the Sleeping Beauty, from the Ogre to Tom Thumb.

Through costume changes and soft, sensual movements, the male performers embody a succession of different female figures, playing with their ambiguities.

LIVE MUSIC

A cellist and percussionist share the stage with dancers and circus artists. Combining dance and music with the theme of fairy tales reinforces the poetic elements of the piece.

The music of the show is the second original création of Jean-Baptiste Sabiani for Christian and François Ben Aïm.

For more than twenty years, Christian and François BEN AÏM have been building a work rich of poetry and high standards, fraternal bond and singularity.

At the end of a multidisciplinary training combining dance, physical theater and circus, each one follows his path as a performer, then the two brothers meet to create À l’abri du regard des hommes, avant d’aller mourir ailleurs, a hybrid dance-theater piece which marks the beginning of their collaboration in 1997. Twenty pieces will follow which anchor their fieldwork as much as they travel internationally. They draw their inspiration from literary, musical and pictorial sources, and intimately mixing artistic disciplines on the stage : En plein coeur (2006), Valse (2010), The Ogresse on archives and her dog (2011), Lightness of Storms (2014), Burn, rebellious hearts (2017), Mirages — boreal souls (2018), Arise (2019), JESTS (2021).

Marked by an uncompromising energy, summoning the performer to an intimate relationship with movement, the dance of the BEN AÏM brothers offers, beyond a speech, an experience, a "crossing" that the dancer performs in front of our eyes, that he lives each time with the sincerity of a full and entire presence.

With this demanding writing comes an art of composition which gives birth to the stage an imagination borrowing from dreams, from the marvelous of the tale and from invisible realities. Through a subtle effect of empathy, the audience enters an unstable world, where everything is the object of poetic questioning - a world to be experienced together.

Calendar of creations

2021

JESTS

2019

Snapshots - A series femal solos

Arise

2018

Mirages — Boreal souls

2017

Brûlent nos coeurs insoumis (Burn, rebellious hearts)

2016

Peuplé, dépeuplé (Inhabited, uninhabited)

2014

La légèreté des tempêtes

2013

La forêt ébouriffée (The Dense Forest)

L'orée des visages

Karma

2011

L'Ogresse des archives et son chien

2010

Valse en trois temps

Résistance au droit

2008

Louves

Amor fati fati amor

2007

You're a bird, now!

2006

En plein coeur

2004

Carcasses, un oeil pour deux

2003

Ne vous fiez pas au titre, il peut encore changer

2001

Ô my brother !

La Frontera

1999

Un homme en marche

L'enfant du miroir

1998

L'homme rapaillé

1997

A l'abri du regard des hommes, avant d'aller mourir ailleurs