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Choreography & performance: Didier Théron
Music: Daniel Menche “Legion of Walls” / Johann-Sebastian Bach “St. Matthew Passion”
Lighting design: Alain Paradis
Technical director: Eve Enjalric

First part

Selfportrait Raskolnikov

Solo by Didier Théron based on Fjodor Dostoyevsky’s character from “Crime and Punishment “

ABOUT THE SHOW
This piece is inspired by André Markowicz’s new translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel „Crime and Punishment“ which focuses on the characters’ action and movement, not their psychology. This translation proposes a living text with new images and rhythms. Two essential motives are revealed here: the motive of oppression, of destruction and burden, and that of the step, the path, the passage, which make of this novel an eminently choreographic work. It is a „pre-text“ for particular research on movement and on the body in a scenic space; a work dealing with madness, with a very specific vocabulary experimenting with tensions, with impulses, with extreme situations of instability, with ruptures in energy and space.



It is the story of a young man who murders an old woman. On stage, two characters, one individual by himself. Who does Raskolnikov murder? The story may be a different one. My wish and my decision to create the personage Raskolnikov grew from this new text, from these words, rhythms, shades, and the style of Dostoyevsky, which turns Raskolnikov 'into a new human being'. Didier Théron

"With almost acrobatic use of the body, he has produced an abyssal chamber theater-miniature on the texture of madness."  Nűrnberger Nachtrichten (Germany)

Choreography: Didier Théron
Artistic advisor: Michèle Murray
Performance: Lorenzo Dallaï, Benjamin Dukhan, Samuel Watts
Lighting design: Catherine Noden
Technical director: Eve Enjalric
Production: Compagnie Didier Théron – Espace Bernard Glandier
Coproduction: Montpellier Dance Festival 2011.
With the support of Shanghai World Expo 2010, Région Languedoc-Roussillon, Agglomération de Montpellier, Ville de Montpellier.

Second part

Bolero "Les Hommes"

ABOUT THE SHOW
Le Boléro des Hommes is the second part of Shanghai Boléro a trilogy which was commissioned  for the Shanghai World Expo 2010. It is built around the composition of Ravel’s “Boléro”, perceived here as a support. It is about revealing this work, seeing and perceiving it in a different way, giving dance and the body different postures, approaching notions of sensuality, eroticism, by questioning the construction of emotions, and eventually, approaching “the mechanics of desire”. We want to give it a different life with a different body.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR/COMPANY
Born in Béziers (France), Didier Théron lives and works in Montpellier, at the Espace Bernard Glandier. A self-taught person, he trained and danced with the company of Dominique Bagouet and with the Merce Cunningham and  Trisha Brown. Since 1988, and the creation of his first piece The Partisans (First Prize of Choreography at the “Hivernales d’Avignon“), his company has been propelled onto the international scene: Europe (Great Britain, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia), Ukraine, India and Pakistan, Asia (Japan, Hong Kong, Shanghai) and Australia.

"Didier Théron is an artist whose intriguing philosophy offers food for thought and infinite avenues for exploration."
Dance West (Australia)

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Compagnie Didier Théron’  is supported by the Ministry of the Arts, the County Council of Languedoc-Roussillon, the County Council of Hérault, and the Town Council of Montpellier.

www.didiertheron.com

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Photos from the 29DWF performances 22nd & 23rd May 2012:

Selfportrait Raskolnikov

Photo: Lorena Gellini
Photo: Damir Šefić

Bolero 'Les Hommes'

Photo: Lorena Gellini