SOUS LA PEAU, LA NUIT

2012

The space is dense, as deep as a night of insomnia, where the slightest rustling awakens the imagination. Mikko Hynninen’s sublime lighting penetrates the soft black zones in which Danièle Desnoyers distends time in a series of choreographic cameos, depicting the restless spirits of people of the night. Three women theatrically wiggle their hips and cast seductive glances as an escape from boredom and melancholy. More distant, and freer from the image they project, three men respond to their folly, their exuberance, their sensuality, giving them a framework and anchor. The encounters are fleeting—and often electric. The embraces are sometimes painful, and laughs can turn to tears in the mists of alcohol. For the lightness of the cabaret atmosphere that imbues the invigorating and refined dance of Danièle Desnoyers is deceiving, a mere façade. Sous la peau, la nuit is solemn and heavy. Beneath the glitter and the masks of comedy are fragile, vulnerable souls. Abounding in contrasts and pulsating rhythms, the musical environment accentuates these shards of life, echoing our collective memory.

After residencies at the Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique in Montreal, the Baryshnikov Art Center in New York, the Atelier in Paris – Carolyn Carlson, and TanzWerkstatt in Berlin, the choreographer has probed the sources of movement to find a new emotional density, a new world of sensations and desires. Allowing the work to take shape through an accumulation of layers, and the meaning to percolate through the mysteries of the body, Danièle Desnoyers has created long sequences of finely textured movement, which remind us that dance has the power to fuel the imagination, unfurling its silent score within the music that completes it.

Sous la peau, la nuit is a production of Le Carré des Lombes in co-production with the Festival TransAmériques and with the collaboration of the Baryshnikov Arts Center (New York), Tanzwerkstatt (Berlin) and L’Atelier de Paris – Carolyn Carlson (Paris).

Credits

Artistic director & choreographer

Danièle Desnoyers

Rehearsal director

Sophie Corriveau

Sound design

Julien Lanthier

Music

Nicolas Bernier + Aphex Twin + Apparat, Gonzales + Julia Wolfe

Lighting

Mikko Hynninen

Costumes

Denis Lavoie

Makeup and hairstyling

Angelo Barsetti

Props

Claude Cyr

Dancers

Karina Champoux, Laurence Dufour, Jean-Benoit Labrecque, Pierre-Marc Ouellette, Nicolas Patry, Clémentine Schindler, Anne Thériault