36, Avenue Georges Mandel
12/10/2007
, 
22:30
13/10/2007
, 18:30
concept, direction, choreography and dance Raimund Hoghe
artistic collaboration Luca Giacomo Schulte
special guest Emmanuel Eggermont
light Raimund Hoghe, Amaury Seval
sound Patrick Buret
music Maria Callas sings airs of Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Spontini, Giordano, Gluck, Massenet, Catalani, Saint-Saëns and Bizet registered between 1949 and 1974
photograph Rosa Frank
management Arnaud antolinos, Julie Bordez
production Compagnie Raimund Hoghe (Düsseldorf/Paris)
co-production Ganesa Production - Spring Wave Festival/Contemporary Arts Festival of Seoul (Ccorea), Festival d’Avignon, Centre national de danse contemporaine d’Angers, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster
with the support of Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris)
thanks to Franko B
RUNNING TIME 1hr 40mins
NATIONAL PREMIERE
36, Avenue Georges Mandel could be the title of a Modiano novel or a song by Barbara, but when Raimund Hoghe picked it, he had a particular idea in mind. Aficionados will no doubt have understood immediately. The address, in all meanings of the word, takes us back to the now mythical opera personality, Maria Callas, and her last home address in Paris. In the empty, bare space, the German artist moves like a sleepwalker following what the sound of this most original and powerful voice, which profoundly marked the second half of the 20th century, dictates to him.
The dramatist and performer’s writing coupled with his ritualised use of gestures, sketch a new dialogue with the shadow of the Diva. It follows the echo of a life spent on the steep slopes of beauty bathed in the melancholy transparency of art with its dazzling highs and lows. By depicting a singular distress, roaming and migrating its way through the materials and the choreographer’s scenic images, the face of another community – that of the homeless – shines out.
The world of bodies that interests Raimund Hoghe shows a predilection for music. He likes to reveal meaning through listening and posture in minimally designed choreographies. Using gestures in displacement or simple manipulations of objects – here, a few clothes and images – his interpretation and his direction sharpen the eye, slinging the spectator into the strata of time. Memory – of places, people and history – revisited through the inimacy of a solo, turns this creation into a tribute as much as a shared experience that changes again with the apparition of Emmanuel Eggermont, who moves like “a dream, a memory of youth, a guardian angel or a passer-by who opens a new door”.
