Radioscopies

Statut

Stage short-film / Creation 12, 13, 14 March 2015 at Théâtre Le Manège, Mons as part of Mons 2015, European capital of culture, and the International Festival Via.

Présentation

“... a secret of the world, a secret of things which had to be revealed.” Conrad Detrez

On the occasion of « Mons 2015 » Michèle Noiret was asked to work on an interview with the Belgian writer Conrad Detrez. She was hesitant because a documentary tone was demanded, while she was looking more for a fictional one. Her project will be the production of stage short-films, for which she wishes to develop the innovative stage composition used in her previous performance Hors-champ (2013).The stage design process has already been started for this: a section of the choreographe’s rehearsal studio will be faithfully reproduced on the stage. This choice is motivated by the wish to draw inspiration from the very places where the choreographer creates and lives: the studio is located in her private home, and this situation offers shooting places, “familiar off-screen spaces”, accessible at all times, creating a kind of mise en abyme.

…

The « Mons 2015 » proposal revolves around the 1978 interview with writer Conrad Detrez by Jacques Chancel on the occasion of the Renaudot prize he had just received for his novel L’herbe à brûler.
Michèle Noiret has very freely drawn inspiration from certain passages of this incredible piece of autofiction, imbued with the strong ambiances and sensations she experienced while reading it. In this way, among other things there is a Brazilian atmosphere, inspired by the chapters in which the protagonist is swept along by the madness, sensuality and agonies of the Rio Carnival. She also finds resonances in extracts from the writings of Conrad Detrez: the theme of violence, due particularly to ignorance; the idea that a human being can be reduced to a label, a constant temptation in today’s media and society, and, especially, the idea that reality contains a part of unreality, that there is a secret of things, a secret of the world that we must extract — a recurring theme in the choreographic creations. Michèle Noiret will take up this last thought to lead us, throughout the piece, into “this secret of things” Detrez talks about, through the tortured maze of his subconscious, by increasingly troubling shortcuts.

In her creations, the choreographer places the human at the centre of her thoughts. The full weight of cinematographic techniques, as so many vectors of meaning, the aesthetic images and their processing is harnessed in the conception of these “choreographic characters” whose innermost self is scrutinised almost ethnographically, thanks to the discreet and efficient presence on the stage of cameraman Vincent Pinckaers.

Michèle Noiret will invent a second – double – personality who, a faint a smile on her lips, seems to taunt her; someone who knows the secrets buried in the memory of the walls that seem to resonate with the voice of Detrez; walls that hum, murmur, crack and halfopen. A double that will escape her and live her own life, and take us through a labyrinth of doorways and stairways, to meet a man rising from the shadows — and most probably a pure figment of her imagination. Carrying us along in this secret of things, Michèle Noiret opens doors that she never shuts.

Radioscopies - 2015

Teaser

Pictures

Press

Michèle Noiret is engaged in a choreographic quest that mutualises the means of theatre and cinema. Beyond the ingeniousness of the technical system, enabling the stage space to be redesigned geometrically and revitalised, the inscription of dance within the field of film doubles its dramatic intensity. Borne by a prodigious choreographer, whose body resists the test of time, the project forcefully embodies the Deleuzian idea of the ‘image-movement’, where film and dance seal their common kinetic destiny.”

Florian Gaité, Inferno Magazine, February 2016

Michèle Noiret is a magician who likes to play with our senses, fooled but never disillusioned. As such, it is our connection to time, to the times, to the concordance and discordance of time, according to two simultaneous images, that she brings into play: she exacerbates the uncertain passage of time.”

Philippe Dewolf, Musiq3-Portail Culture, February 2016

Radioscopies is a ‘moving plasma’, as Jean-Luc Godard would have said, a fluid cinema-stage set-up against separation, a sensitive spilling out of the nightmare into ‘augmented’ private life. It may be choreographer Michèle Noiret’s most sensitive and most intense piece. Wide or tight shot, in the interplay of scales between macro and micro, she has the force of an interrogation. Having experienced its expressive powers, Radioscopies leaves the field open to all poetic peregrinations. The Noiret shot, singular among all, is the cause of our delight.”

Sylvia Botella, Rtbf-Portail Culture, February 2016

I often get exasperated by the omnipresence of the screen in dance pieces. That’s not the case here. The use of film conceived and shot by design, its subtle, reactive, inventive and dynamic dialogue with the stage, the dramatic composition fashioned from simple things, drawn out of the sheath of the intimate, the choice of romantic or exotic music and, above all, the emotion generated by the splendour of an artist at the peak of her art, all of that gave me a joy, a rare and infinite happiness as only the theatre can when it is at its very best. Michèle Noiret does not dance alone, as has often been said. Michèle Noiret dances with dance. And her whole piece dances with her. Michèle Noiret is all dance in this piece.”

Patrick Roegiers, writer, February 2016

Radioscopies, the accent is delicately placed on the mise en abyme of the words. The set reproduces the façade of the place where the choreographer lives and works. (...) The overall effect is very bright, truly disturbing as every landmark has been blurred. (…) The very elaborate sets are remarkable. Already superb in Hors-champ (2013), these hyper-realistic mobile sets introduce genuine unrest.”

Philippe Verrièle, February 2016

Michèle Noiret presented, on the stage of the Teatro Mercadante in Naples, one of the most interesting shows in the 2015 edition of the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia. (...) The moments concerning the couple are very beautiful and cinematographic: they recall the films of Antonioni, Bertolucci and the French New Wave.»

Simona Perrella, Picwick, June 2015

It’s certainly this hidden world that interests the dancer and choreographer. And that’s what she finds in Conrad Detrez, a few words of whom we hear at the start of the performance, evoking the wonderful, the imaginary and the certainty that each of us has several different personalities. (…) Michèle Noiret is both the woman in a red dress propelled into a sensual, solitary dance and the same woman watching her double at a good distance. Soon a man appears, suddenly, from the outside (climbing the steps four at a time, losing his way in the maze of shelves…) If one wonders logically about the presence of this man, his relationship with the woman who lives in this house, one soon forgets these things, captivated by the sensual dance that unites them. A certain tension constantly hangs in the air, but closer to tenderness than aggression. We do not know what unites the two protagonists, but we become attached to their double act, their appearances on stage and on screen, in front of and behind an astonishing moving set that reproduces part of the artist’s actual studio. (…) Taking us to the hidden side, Michèle Noiret opens doors but never shuts them. Each revelation throws up new questions, new dreams, new secrets. An endless well…”

Jean-Marie Wynants, Le Soir, March 2015

Detrez makes himself heard from the outset, underlining the secret, the mystery of the world. It’s there that the choreographer is consonant with him; through gestures and looks, she likes to touch on the dark sides of the soul and the body. Between stage and screen we see relay and response. Passages, in addition to the doubts bred by the live or recorded film. The formula has proven its worth in previous pieces; we’re still hooked. The lights of Xavier Lauwers, the soundscape created by Todor Todoroff and Pierre-Axel Izerable and Sabine Theunissen’s fluid stage design serve as the setting for the discreet meeting between a woman (Michèle Noiret) and a stranger (Isael Mata), raising questions of reality, dream, desire and domination. (…) Besides the dance – precise, impulsive, full of undulations (…) – we are captivated by moments: dazzling where the image splits and blurs, almost entering a trance and probing identity as a shifting parameter.”

Marie Baudet, La Libre Belgique, March 2015

Michèle Noiret has constructed this ‘stage short’ by continuously mashing things up. Reversed images (…), live images, mixed with recorded images without visible editing point, prompting you to loosen your grip, free yourself from logic and allow yourself to be swept along by the imagination (…) The choreographer has created an enchanting and aesthetic piece.”

Didier Béclard, L’Echo, March 2015

Identity in the digital age
If one artist is a perfect fit with the VIA programme it’s Michèle Noiret, dancer, choreographer, and passionate about the links between dance and the possibilities offered by technology. In Radioscopies, which will be performed for the first time in Mons, she invents a hybrid form named “court-métrage scénique” or stage short. A blend of choreography, theatre and cinema of which she knows the secret…”

Jean-Marie Wynants, Le Soir, March 2015

Cast & credits

Script, staging and choreography Michèle Noiret
Created with and performed by Michèle Noiret, Isael Mata
Artistic collaboration Dominique Duszynski
Assistant Florence Augendre
Films / stage cameraman Vincent Pinckaers
Films / video technician Benoît Gillet
Original music composition Todor Todoroff, Pierre-Axel Izerable
Music Bartok, Music for strings, percussion and celesta - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, direction James Levine ; Martinho da Vila, Claustrofobia
Light Xavier Lauwers
Set design Sabine Theunissen
Costumes Michèle Noiret, Nazanin Fakoor
Technical direction Christian Halkin
Light technician Marc Lhommel
Sound technician Pierre-Axel Izerable
Stage technicians Christian Halkin, Christophe Blacha
Set and costumes making Ateliers du Théâtre National, Brussels
Photographies Sergine Laloux
Production and tour manager Claire Geyer
Communication and press Alexandra de Laminne
Administration and coordination Cathy Zanté
Thanks to Carlo Chapelle, Stephan Dunkelman
Duration 52 minutes

Production Compagnie Michèle Noiret / Tandem asbl
Coproduction Fondation Mons 2015, European Capital of Culture • Manège.mons • Théâtre National de la Communauté française de Belgique, Brussels • Théâtre Louis Aragon, scène conventionnée danse de Tremblay-en-France.
Produced with the support of the Ministère de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service de la Danse.

The Compagnie Michèle Noiret is subsidised by the Ministère de la Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service de la Danse, and receives regular support from Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI).
Michèle Noiret is a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium.

The Compagnie Michèle Noiret is in residence at Théâtre Louis Aragon, scène conventionnée danse de Tremblay-en-France, within the context of “Territoire(s) de la Danse 2015”, with the support of the Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis.

Touring

28th October 2017 Dansens Hus / CODA Oslo International Dance Festival - Oslo (NO)

16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th February 2016 Théâtre National - Bruxelles (B)

14th November 2015 Théâtre Louis Aragon - Tremblay en France (F)

22nd and 23rd June 2015 Teatro Mercadante / Napoli Teatro Festival Italia - Naples (ITA)

12th, 13th and 14th February 2015 Le Manège / Mons 2015 / Festival Via - Mons (BE)