Ah, Japan … Nova talked to you about it, up and down, sideways, during a trip to his capital a few years ago. Its endless days of work zero point productivity not much, its ramen, its giant monsters, its magnetically levitating trains, its fantastic pop nuggets (Shintaro Sakamoto, YMO, Sachiko Kanebonu, and then this ribouldinguerie of “Funky Shammy”), his words with untranslatable nuances. And, in a more carefully regulated register, its ancestral arts, from ikebana to kodo, via the tea ceremony or the famous origami.
An inventory of centuries-old arts to which should be added le kyudo. This traditional, ceremonial practice of archery, practiced by women, the choreographer Mylene Benoit discovered it one starry night in 2017 on the slopes of Mount Higashiyama, during his creation residency at the Villa Kujoyama – the Japanese counterpart, Kyoto, of the Roman Villa Medici.
A chandelier has passed, with all its candles. The memory of this experience, of this discovery has been metabolized, concentrated into a creation, danced to La Manufacture : Archaea. A polysemic term for the span of a bow, as one of the earliest forms of terrestrial life; arkhè, the origin, the beginning. A show for seven performers, seven women, celebrating their rediscovered, almost chthonic power, by playing on a slightly different string compared to the Guerrillas embodied on this same stage, last week; more original than secessionist, Archaea takes as its motif a sacred liturgy, bringing female bodies and voices to the forefront, “weapon of knowledge, tool of perpetual relation to the world” (dixit Mylene Benoit) that patriarchies have long put under the bushel.
Escorted by two live musicians, the electronics Annabelle Playe and the cellist Penelope Michel, the group (whose international distribution – Chile, Israel, Sweden, Taiwan – would give hives to all the Zemmour and Le Pen) responds and spreads its unearthed words beyond the cloisters, hammers the metal, unleashes his arrows, paints himself, tirelessly models and reshapes his movements. Rituals and experiences that impose, that do not lack majesty, returning to the hastily labeled second sex its characters, its warlike, singular, solar (rising?) prerogatives.
At this show, your favorite radio station (at least, we hope) offers you some seats, right here, right nowwith the password Nova Loves.
Archaeaby Mylène Benoît, Thursday April 7 at 8 p.m. @ La Manufacture (Bordeaux).
