Story
We all believe to know Frankenstein, the pathetic and oaf monster from James Whales movies... and we are all wrong!
Frankenstein is the fruit of pain.
Fantastic novel written by Mary Shelley, English young woman whose tortured life is symptomatic of the discrepancies of the 19th century: codified and ultra rigid society confronted with the innumerable hopes raised by scientific discoveries - electricity and biology, where the fabulous capacity of creation of God seems to be within man's grasp - and yearning for new ways of thinking, inevitably more humanistic and spiritual.
This nameless, phantom monster of a new kind, is nothing compared with the person who created it. It is the torment and the ambition of the creator which are represented here. On stage, the characters want to build another world and commit themselves to such extent that they become their own creations. The scenery, as well, as the story progresses: from the university of Ingolstadt to the boat trapped in the storms of Antartic, it becomes a laboratory, a castle, a hospital...
Here, not words, the body is the language, the creator and the creature. Being based on a direction where contemporary dance mixes with the vocabulary of circus, the group endlessly tries to give life to its own image: the result are only humanoid alter egos; some as hideous as the monster of Frankenstein and others as touching as Dolly the sheep. When they reach the reason, hatred and revolt take over...
Horizontal trackings, juggling, dances on the ground or in the air with one, two or three on a trapeze, the characters come and go, grab themselves, call themselves, flee in face of the horror of their inventions, fire and the grace mix and clash on techno-sounding rhythms torn by the grindings of an ecstatic saxophone.
This performance was born from the meeting of the Cirque Baroque and the organizers of the Kunstfest Festival of Weimar - European cultural Capital in 1999 - articulated around the work of Wolfgang Deichsel on the promethean myth of Frankenstein.
Casting
Conception: Christian Taguet
Direction:Agustin Letelier
Assistant of direction: Lisa Lemaire
Performers:
Michel Arias - Pierre-Jules Billon - Anja Dietrich - Pascal Fernandez - Eros Galvao - Cécilia Hermosilla - Aurélie Horde - Yannick Javaudin - Anne Joubinaux - Agustin Letelier François Morel - Camila Osorio Ghigliotto - Laure Pervakov - Maxim Pervakov - Saxi - Abdeliazide Senhadji - Eric Stieffatre - Benoît Taguet - Jean-Baptiste Taguet - Katrin Wolf - Akémi Yamauchi Fontanarosa
Choreography: Eric Stieffatre
Composition and musical performance: Pierre-Jules Billon - Pascal Fernandez - François Morel - Saxi
Sound: Jean Pierre Legrand - Ivan Roussel
llights: Jean-Marie Prouvèze
Scenery and costumes: Vincenzo Iorio
Costumes manager: Olga Papp
Costumes making: Nakano Kaoru - Atsuko Uzawa - Karine Charpentier
Scenery making: Ateliers Devineau
With the financial support of the Ministry of Culture DMTS and Conseil Général du Val-de-Marne
Partners: Weimar city (germany)
