After the Trojan Women
Creation for 2020
Piece for 9 interpreters
The last performance of Euripides’Les Troyennes is happening in a singular place: a border zone, at customs, a port or a theater perhaps, anyway a place where people transit.
There are women waiting in the wings, they talk, dance and sing at the same time about their lives and about their work. Sometimes, between myth and reality, characters created by Euripides appear; their presence changes the order of things. Suddenly, frontier officer appear and try control the situation.
In 1989 in Brussels, I was at the last performance of Les Troyennes, directed by Thierry Salmon (1957-1998) to the sound of a music composed by Giovanna Marini. As a form of ode to femininity and oddity, today I want to recreate a contemporary narration between memory and exchange, similar to the thousands of women refugee who fled their country, fled wars..
How many Cassandra, Hecuba, Andromaque or Helen have become the Syrians, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Sudanese or the Libyans now in exile?
Tonight, they give their last performance before the departure, and they have to leave. Inevitably.
Claudio Bernardo, June 2017
“Such a different Ithaca, that Ulysses tries to return to. Ithaca is the wound that will not close until the lips do not kiss the ground. Ithaca is so different from Lampedusa, the most desired islands on the sea, for who does not know it, does not know where it is. And yet, he blindly tries to touch it following a journey through the deserts and the years, suspended on the waves, on tuna traps. Ithaca is the return of a single man, Lampedusa is the landing of thousands, minus the hundreds, minus one in two who were lost and will not be counted and will not be sung in a poem. The Arrival in Ithaca is equivalent to the arrival in Lampedusa. The same wind, quick at changing directions, the same sky that dissolves in the ink and the light green colour of the wild caper. Ithaca does not care for the relief of who ascended and descended the infinite waves and feels the vertigo upon arrival. Lampedusa is like Ithaca for who went at sea with the largest and most dilapidated fleet that Ulysses had ever had.”
Erri de Luca, extract from the keynote speech to the jury of the European Book Prize, 2015
Concept and choreography Claudio Bernardo
Performers Carmela Locantore, Cécilia Kankonda, Elise Gabële, Fatou Traoré, Gabriella Iacono, Johanne Saunier, Maria Grazia Mandruzzato, Maxime Jennes, Tijen Lawton
Staging assistant Marie Bach
Choreographic assistant Anne-Cécile Massoni
Musical composition Giovanna Marini (songs composed for Les Troyennes by Thierry Salmon), Dorian Baste
Video documentary Cristina Dias, KinodocProduction, administration Xavier Melis
Promotion Tristan Barani
Duration about 100 minutess
Coproduction (ongoing) Théâtre Varia (Be), Théâtre de Liège (Be), Charleroi Danse (Be), Oriente Occidente Danza Festival (It), DC&J Creation (Be), Tax Shelter du gouvernement fédéral belge (Be)
Accueils studio / Residences (ongoing) Charleroi Danse (Be), National Choreographic Center Scenario Pubblico/Catania (It), Oriente Occidente Danza Festival (It), Téâtre Varia (Be)
With support from Ministère de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles – Service de la Danse, du Tax Shelter du gouvernement fédéral belge, National Choregraphic Center Scenario Pubblico/Catania, Catania tango club, Wakko Kapper
With help from Wallonie-Bruxelles Théâtre/Danse, SACD Belgium
The company is in artistic residence at Théâtre Varia, Centre dramatique de Bruxelles.
