Thanks to the support of the programme’s partner institutions, the tenth edition of New Settings is organised around three key periods in the performing-arts calendar, the better to reflect the rhythms of the creative process and to ensure these works are presented under optimum conditions. This close attention to the production phase right up to the opening night reflects the Foundation’s commitment to providing rigorous and tailored support to performance works.
The first part of the 2020-2021 programme will open in the autumn. With Théo Mercier and Steven Michel’s fascinating and mysterious Big Sisters, the phantasmagorical creatures of Clédat & Petitpierre in Les Merveilles, and the colourful fireworks orchestrated by Euripides Laskaridis in Elenit, this edition of New Settings promises to start with a bang. Further performances share universal experiences, from the fleeting passage of time in Meg Stuart’s Cascade to the elusiveness of memory in Memory Loss by Ann Van den Broek. Finally, with the Encyclopédie de la parole, Suite n°4, Joris Lacoste, Ictus, Pierre-Yves Macé & Sébastien Roux invite audiences to hear voices, as never before. All of these works share an experimental approach to performing-arts codes and conventions that will surprise and challenge audiences’ expectations.
In spring 2021, the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale hosts three pieces infused by the visual arts, echoing the blending of disciplines that is central to the artistic engagement of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. As this trio of works shift the coordinates of various artistic mediums, they give rise to fascinating and mutually enriching hybrid forms. In Cinq apparitions successives, choreographer Vincent Dupont deploys a spectral technology, through which he paradoxically gives concrete form to his danced exploration of the apparition. Transposing her filmmaking practice to the stage, Ariane Loze experiments with the constraints of live performance to offer her audience an intense experience in Bonheur Entrepreneur, while Julien Prévieux uses choreography to explore La valeur de la vie (“the value of life”) in a reflection upon our absurd relationship with numbers. Through their visual-arts, performative and experimental elements, these works together showcase an exciting range of new possibilities for the stage.
Leading us into summer, the final series of the 2020-2021 edition of New Settings invites audiences to look far ahead with three projects featuring programmatic or prospective dimensions. Their creative processes explore different ways of manipulating and engaging with images. Cindy Van Acker activates the memory of past works in Without References, while two further pieces deploy cinematic experiments: Marco da Silva Ferreira & Jorge Jácome blend film with the movements of the body in SIRI, while Cyril Teste uses the medium to offer an original dramatic take on Chekhov’s The Seagull.
In each of these works, the montage and combination of different artistic mediums results in unconventional and energetic forms that shake up the theatrical experience. The ambitious pieces that bring the programme to a close have each benefited from an extended production and creation time frame thanks to the support provided by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès through New Settings.
This new selection of works also attests to the Foundation’s ongoing commitment to artists previously featured in New Settings, including Cyril Teste, Théo Mercier, Vincent Dupont, Euripides Laskaridis, Joris Lacoste and Clédat & Petitpierre.
