SARAH BALTZINGER COMPANY FRANCE
VÉNUS ANATOMIQUE
Concept, artistic director, creation & choreography: Sarah Baltzinger
Co-creation & choreographic assistance: Isaiah Wilson
Co-creation & performance: Chiara Corbetta, Shynna Kalis, Marie Lévénez, Clara-Lou Munié & Océane Robin
Sound composition: Guillaume Jullien
Dramaturgy: Amandine Truffy, Isaiah Wilson & Sarah Baltzinger
Background research: Alexandra Joly & Sarah Baltzinger
Set design: Manon Terranova
Body sculptures: Manuela Benaim
Rehearsal director: Brian CA
Lighting design & Stage management: Thibault Dubourg
Co-producers: Grand-Théâtre, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Arsenal, Cité musicale-Metz, Trois C-L, maison pour la danse, Festival Faits d’hiver (Micadanses), Paris.
Partners & supports: Centre National de la Danse - Lyon, Cie La Baraka / La Chapelle - Abou Lagraa & Nawal Aït Benalla, Théâtre Des Cordeliers - Annonay, Ministère de la Culture du Luxembourg, Kultur l lx, Drac Grand Est, Région Grand Est, Département de la Moselle, Ville de Metz, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, Spedidam, Adami, Fondation Indépendance.
Duration: 55 mins| N-16
Photo by Sarah Aubel, Brian Ca
Sarah’s work inevitably stems from her curious way of relating to the world, between disorder and unapologetic emotion. Her work reflects a certain approach to bodies that find circulation between strangeness and non logical ways of existing. That’s how she found herself an organic place where she experiments the ‘‘puppeteering body’’. This filter-less approach leads her to create grotesque objects where absurdity takes place. In Vénus Anatomique, a multifaceted piece, she aims to explore all layers of what it means to have and wear a female body and the overwhelming alienation that comes with it.
VÉNUS ANATOMIQUE exhibits a collection of female bodies that are being prepared for “labor” and that are suddenly plunged into a state of survival. The piece reveals bodies that are split into two states: human nature and as an object of representation. This duality is contrasted by the body's constant desire to reappropriate itself. In this project, Sarah Baltzinger comments on the disorder of the world, that of the superficial simulacrum and sexualization of the female body. She creates a universe where femininity is turned into a masquerade and performs itself through an absurd and distorted lens.
In reference to the fascinating wax-figures created by the ceroplast Clemente Susini (late 18th century), VÉNUS ANATOMIQUE articulates itself between the macabre and “pulsion de vie”. The piece creates an imaginary world that deals with the strange, erotic and biblical nature of these artificial bodies that were designed to teach anatomy to medical students and to the general public. This project is a continuation of a choreographic research based on puppeteering and mechanical gestures that reveal the body in a fragmented way. It is the friction between pronounced physicality and immobility that acts as a driving force trough-out the whole choreography.
