Giovanni’s Club
15 November 2016 – creation for 7 performers
Performance nominated to the Belgian Critics Prize 2017.
An unlikely place, a club from the imagination, a cabaret steamy with liberty.
A creation for seven performers around the mythical figures of Casanova and Don Giovanni.
A work on masculinity and virility, a questioning for the early years of our century.
A club which reveals, through the power of seduction, the pains and weaknesses of men, a place where they offer a strip-tease of the soul, the one form of nudity that is never allowed them.
And so they become sensitive, cry, forget the power of phallocracy and become more feminine, removed from any sexual orientation.
As in an epiphany, fewer men go into this club than come out…
Welcome to Giovanni’s club.
“ During my researches on Don Giovanni, I stayed on the island of Ouessant, in the Finistère, in winter 2013. In Ouessant, I felt a sensation of profound isolation, but also the powerful magnetic attraction emanating from the island. Beyond a certain perimeter, this force attracts everything that draws near, and often annihilates it. Ouessant is surrounded by extremely powerful tides, a high number of shipwrecks lie at the bottom of the sea in the waters around it.
One evening, I was lucky enough to be sat at table with the guardians of the island’s lighthouse who, when their controls were still operated manually, took turns going out to sea (Note: the island of Ouessant has three lighthouses at sea and two on land). These men have lived most of their lives out at sea, in complete solitude for several weeks, surrounded sometimes by a raging sea, storms, tidal waves. They hold to a strict code of honour and discipline, because they depend on those who bring them to the lighthouse and who come and get them. They prevent shipwrecks, as much for the island as for seafarers. And, like magnets, lighthouse and island are linked: one of them repels, the other attracts. “
Claudio Bernardo, winter 2015
Choreography and stage design Claudio Bernardo
Performers Mikaël Bres, Vincent Clavaguera-Pratx, Ezra Fieremans, Rafaël Gomes, Calixto Neto, Mavi Veloso, Christos Xyrafakis
Participation exceptionnelle Jérôme Varnier (lyrical singer), Mimbi Lubansu (child)
Assistant to the choreographer Anne-Cécile Massoni
Original composition Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven, Yves de Mey
Lighting design Marco Forcella
Costume design Jean-Paul Lespagnard
Stage design assistant Marie Ghaye
Stage management and sound Matthieu Kaempfer
Light master Tom Van Antro
Construction of the set and costume realization Ateliers du Théâtre de Liège
Pictures Jean-Luc Tanghe
With the kind collaboration of Wakko Kapper
Production As Palavras – Cie Claudio Bernardo
Coproduction Théâtre de Liège
Residency Charleroi-Danses / Centre chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles
Corealisation, creation and artistic residency of the company Théâtre Varia
Corealisation Ars Musica
With support from Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Administration Générale de la Culture, Service général de la Création Artistique
With help from SACD Belgium, Wallonie-Bruxelles Théâtre/Danse, Wallonie-Bruxelles International
Special thanks to Philip Bourges, Cristina Dias, Donat Mailleux , Armando Menicacci, Tristan-Frédéric Moir, Myriam Saduis, Myriam Simenon (In charge of the Atelier Costumes du Théâtre de Liège)
Production/administration Agnès Pondeville
Promotion/communication Mathilde Florica, Léonore Guy
