A choreographer and director captures and articulates the gestures and movements of the blind. Dancers create strange situations by handling objects designed by an artist. An artist recreates a studio on stage and shares it with his actor daughter. A film is produced from start to finish by a troupe of actors. A singer immerses himself in the interactive installation of a visual artist. By opening up new fields of expression, the creators supported by the New Settings programme shift the coordinates of their artistic skills.
No stranger to radical projects, Italian choreographer and director Alessandro Sciarroni transforms the stage into a playing field, exploring the Paralympic sport of goalball that was conceived for the blind and visually impaired. When the game begins, the spectators of Aurora are unaware that they, too, will experience darkness before the dawn.
Is there any limit to the creativity of the videos posted online daily by millions of users? Fascinated by this practice, Barbara Matijević and Giuseppe Chico transpose it to the stage in I’ve never done this before. In an environment conceived by artist Ivan Marušić Klif, audiences can discover “a brief inventory of stories from the world’s largest storage and repurposing workshop, YouTube.”
An artist father and an actress daughter, Michel and Léone François together occupy the space of the stage, or to use the expression that gives their piece its title, Take the Floor, in order to explore the processes of artistic creation. Within this project, written in collaboration with Guillaume Désanges, curator of La Verrière, the emergence of forms blends with a delicate story of filial homage.
A recital, a cartoon, an illustrated publication: the Nature Theater of Oklahoma has left no artistic form untapped for its protean work Life and Times. For its eighth episode, this ongoing story of the life of a middle-class American takes to the silver screen, in a first-time experiment for this group that necessitated a crash course in cinematography.
Le Cauchemar merveilleux is a multisensory, immersive work imagined by artist Léonore Mercier that offers a voyage into the unexpected as it sublimates the poetry and the imagination of singer Arthur H. Whether presented live or as an installation, this creation shakes up our ways of seeing and hearing.
Finally, for the third consecutive year, New Settings enjoys an outing in the United States as part of the Crossing the Line festival created by the FIAF (French Institute Alliance Française). Two works from France that have benefited from support from the Foundation, Suite n°2 and Lives, make their American debut at Crossing the Line. The human voice is at the heart of Joris Lacoste’s ongoing project L’Encyclopédie de la parole; New York audiences discover Suite n°2 from this work. Choreographer and performer Ali Moini’s work Lives, which was presented in Paris as part of New Settings, meanwhile offers an uncompromising, autobiographical solo work.
