Crowd – Holland Festival

In Crowd, a piece for fifteen dancers, choreographer and director Gisèle Vienne focuses on the large scale of emotions of humanity, including the unspeakable ones. She questions the spaces societies imagine to express those in a way that this expression doesn’t harm the community and allows these emotions to unfold. These questions are also the ones related to the relation between arts and religions. The time and space mix up in Vienne’s choreography, referring to early 90s rave, is playing with strong time distortions and perceptions in various ways. In addition to individual stories, the dancers show as a group how a society can stimulate violence into an eventual positive experience. The soundtrack is a collage by Peter Rehberg, covering thirty years of electronic music history, including new work by the pioneering duo KTL (Rehberg and Stephen O'Malley). Crowd is a dialogue with our intimate self in all its deepest aspects.

Gisèle Vienne is known for productions that are intoxicating, enchanting and disturbing at the same time. In her stage productions and installations she blurs the boundary between

appearance and reality, playing with the power of suggestion. In her works she opens up another world – that of our fears, dreams and secrets. Knowing that the things we fear also hold a powerful fascination for us, Vienne focuses on the shadowy, unsettling sides of human nature. This is something she shares with her collaborator, the controversial American writer Dennis Cooper, whose texts form the basis for many of her pieces.

One example is the stage adaptation she made of Cooper’s novella Jerk, a dark but poetic reconstruction of the real-life crimes American serial killer Dean Corll carried out with the aid of two teenagers in the 1970s. Vienne gives this text the form of a maniacal ‘solo for a puppeteer’, a monologue presented by the murderer using a couple of deceptively sweet looking hand puppets. In Kindertotenlieder a group of adolescents gathers in a hair-raising snowy landscape to attend a black metal concert, a memorial ritual for a boy who was killed by his best friend. With a cast of ten life-sized puppets, four dancers, one actor and two musicians – Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley – Vienne reconstructs the murder from multiple perspectives.

In Crowd Vienne shifts the ‘arena’ to a 90s underground rave. No puppets this time, but fifteen young dancers who abandon themselves to the techno beat. On a desolately empty stage, strewn with compost and plastic litter, the group dance themselves into a state evoking trance. Crowd presents a modern-day ritual that offers a release for tension and aggression. Vienne also plays with the perceptions of the audience by influencing them through rhythmic disruptions in the music, lighting and movements. Dancers are caught up in the ingenious lighting design by Patrick Riou, movements slow down or are repeated like animated GIFs, focusing attention inescapably on each of the dancers individually. Although the ravers never speak, each character has his or her own story, subtexts that are tangibly expressed through the way they move and relate to the group.

The individual and collective emotions are underlined by the sound mix created by Peter Rehberg: hard, iconic tracks from the 90s (including a lot of Underground Resistance) and recent work by the duo KTL - Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley. Whereas the former provoke the emotions of the group as a whole, their own, softer work elicits the individual intimacy within the group. Confrontational and moving, Crowd makes for a fascinating journey through the night.

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concept Gisèle Vienne choreography Gisèle Vienne scenography Gisèle Vienne assistant Anja Röttgerkamp, Nuria Guiu Sagarra performance Massimo Fusco, Theo Livesey, Oskar Landström, Rémi Hollant, Vincent Dupuy, Sophie Demeyer, Sylvain Decloitre, Kerstin Daley-Baradel, Marine Chesnais, Philip Berlin, Louise Perming, Katia Petrowick, Jonathan Schatz, Nuria Guiu Sagarra, Tyra Wigg mix, edits & playlist selection Peter Rehberg sound diffusion supervisor Stephen O’Malley sound engineer Adrien Michel light design Patrick Riou dramaturgy Dennis Cooper, Gisèle Vienne production Alma Office executive production DACM coproduction Nanterre-Amandiers, Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg – Scène européenne, Wiener Festwochen, Le Manège, scène nationale – Reims, Théâtre National de Bretagne, Centre Dramatique National Orléans, Loiret Centre, La Filature, BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen with the support of CCN2 – Centre Chorégraphique national de Grenoble, CND Centre national de la danse, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, DRAC Grand Est, la Région Grand Est, Ville de Strasbourg, Institut Français, Nanterre Amandiers CND, Théâtre National de Bretagne

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