LA MALLE DES INDES
DIONYSUS LIVES
Our performance is inspired by Euripides’s The Bacchae. The Bacchae is the story of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who refuses to celebrate the god Dionysus, a heresy that the king will pay for with his own life. As with all Greek tragedies, this piece shows the danger of excess: In this case, Dionysus punishes those who by an excess of hubris and cold intellect, refuse the part of themselves that is most animal and wild. Dionysus brings sacredness to art, savagery and partying. He joins humans and animals, women and men, rich and poor. He is a god of carnival and liberation, a god of earth and theatre.
How can we celebrate Dionysus in 2016? How is our neglect of the wild within ourselves mirrored in our treatment of our environment? How can we rediscover the ancient mysticism of partying? Our celebration aims to shatter frontiers. Animals, long-extinct, make their re-appearances. These rites embody a research into diverse dance forms, sacred music, oral tradition and into building an interaction with the audience. We wish, not only to discover the wild where we are, but to help the audience find the wildness within themselves - an ancient connection to the land, to music, wine and dance that constitutes our contemporary Dionysian celebration!
DIONYSUS LIVES
Our performance is inspired by Euripides’s The Bacchae. The Bacchae is the story of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who refuses to celebrate the god Dionysus, a heresy that the king will pay for with his own life. As with all Greek tragedies, this piece shows the danger of excess: In this case, Dionysus punishes those who by an excess of hubris and cold intellect, refuse the part of themselves that is most animal and wild. Dionysus brings sacredness to art, savagery and partying. He joins humans and animals, women and men, rich and poor. He is a god of carnival and liberation, a god of earth and theatre.
How can we celebrate Dionysus in 2016? How is our neglect of the wild within ourselves mirrored in our treatment of our environment? How can we rediscover the ancient mysticism of partying? Our celebration aims to shatter frontiers. Animals, long-extinct, make their re-appearances. These rites embody a research into diverse dance forms, sacred music, oral tradition and into building an interaction with the audience. We wish, not only to discover the wild where we are, but to help the audience find the wildness within themselves - an ancient connection to the land, to music, wine and dance that constitutes our contemporary Dionysian celebration!
LES CONTES DU LOGICIEN
Prosper and Santy make an unusual couple; he is a celebrated mathematician, she is a professional boxer. They see their lives shaken by the arrival of a mysterious letter. Trying to save their history together they embark in an oniric fever, going further and further into different realities that only have some ground thanks to Prosper's mathematical theories, which are perhaps too theoretical.
The music, composed by Corentin Borgès, constitutes one of the keystones of the play. Rock bordering on punk, the play leaves space for the humourous and ridiculous. Produced by La Malle des Indes in 2013, Les Contes du Logicien transports its audience to a kingdom of illusion. To reach such mirage, the play feeds on techniques from all horizons, from Japanese Butoh to the work of Pina Bausch.
“Full of the effervescence of youth!” Christophe Ravin. Radio VFO
THE ARTHUR RIMBAUD ORCHESTRA
On stage, an electric guitar, a beautiful lady in a black dress, a hobo who smells of dry wine playing the accordion , a 17th century funerary march, and all around, Rimbaud. The Arthur Rimbaud Orchestra is not a theatre play: it is a rock concert.
If Rimbaud had owned an electric guitar in New York in the 60's, he certainly would have gone on stage to scream his poetry in a punk band. The goal of this show is to deliver Rimbaud with this brute force.
The show starts with Rimbaud telling stories and scenes from his life. He tells, in a familiar tone, the mediocrity and the joys of his existence as a run-away child who was caged by the Church, the bourgeoisie and by his mother. The poems that we have chosen breath innocence and erudition, blasphemy and mysticism. And little by little, this revolts and fascinations become less narrative, and the poems become longer. He gets lost with joy in a search of pure poetry, ending with The Drunken Boat, the ending poem and grand finale.
PAST PROJECTS
FESTIVAL EN DEHORS
From the 16th to the 21st of February 2015, the University Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle gave La Malle des Indes "free rein" for a week in which the collective transformed the Censier campus to present the students and visitors several creations around the theme 'En Dehors' (outside).
We were proud to present the work in progress on the piece 'Archipel' by Matthieu Tricaud, a participatory installation by Anya Gleizer and Pablo Valcarce, an audiovisual artwork by Camille Tricaud and Corentin Borges, and a journal collecting texts and illustrations from different members of the collective, among many other pieces.
LES CONTES DU LOGICIEN
Prosper and Santy make an unusual couple; he is a celebrated mathematician, she is a professional boxer. They see their lives shaken by the arrival of a mysterious letter. Trying to save their history together they embark in an oniric fever, going further and further into different realities that only have some ground thanks to Prosper's mathematical theories, which are perhaps too theoretical.
The music, composed by Corentin Borgès, constitutes one of the keystones of the play. Rock bordering on punk, the play leaves space for the humourous and ridiculous. Produced by La Malle des Indes in 2013, Les Contes du Logicien transports its audience to a kingdom of illusion. To reach such mirage, the play feeds on techniques from all horizons, from Japanese Butoh to the work of Pina Bausch.
“Full of the effervescence of youth!” Christophe Ravin. Radio VFO
ARCHIPEL
Some people come to the island to escape the conflict in neighbouring a country, devastated by a civil war and a dictatorship. Others leave to try to join the war. The arrival of a stranger shakes the lifes of the islanders and makes them question their own choices in front of a terrifying reality.
Wendy, the heroine in Peter Pan by James Matthew Barry, chooses to return to London, to the real world. Is she renouncing the eternal childhood of an imaginary country? What does she lose and what does she win, and what are the risks?
To leave the island is to be able to move among the real, to modify it, but also to be hurt by it. It is this choice of whether to leave or not to leave the island - the place where we can live protected from the rest of the world- which has inspired Archipel.