On the stage of the Théâtre des Abbesses, the choreographer Gaëlle Bourges and her four performers construct and deconstruct several master paintings on stage, and question our relationship to representations of the body – and more particularly of the black body – in the history of art. .
A young white woman, her left foot in a mule, lying on a couch and a white cashmere shawl. Edouard Manet’s “Olympia” is one of the most famous impressionist paintings in the world. He entered the legend of Western painting. A nude that caused a scandal when it was presented in Paris in 1865, because her gaze, so real and so serious, evoked that of a luxury prostitute, and not that of a goddess or a character from mythology, like the artist’s contemporaries were used to it when it came to nudes.
This painting, the choreographer Gaëlle Bourges took hold of it, but looking away from the other woman, the one in the background – a black woman, no doubt a servant, who presents Olympia with her bouquet of flowers – and on the one who served as a model to the painter.
With her four performers including Noemie Makota, they construct and deconstruct several master paintings on stage. A show that explores our relationship to art and to representations of the body – and particularly the black body – in art, as they have been constructed by Western iconography.
“(La Bande à) Laura” is a show to be discovered as part of the Autumn Festival of 1er to December 5 at the Théâtre de la Ville / Théâtre des Abbesses.
Reporting : Hortense Volle went to Reims for the 4th edition of the “Charabia festival”, a musical event dedicated to the French language and to poetry in all these states.