VIA INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 2008
Theatre/Dance/Music/WebArts
The 22nd edition of the VIA International Festival 2008 will take place from Thursday, 13 to Sunday, 23 March in Mons and Maubeuge. VIA 08 continues its efforts to discover new artistic trends and talents, with the watchword this year being “immersion”; the constant and quick expansion of numerous new and changing artistic forms which create new and original ways of creation.
From sound performances to digital sculptures, the exhibitions of the VIA and EXIT International Festivals will project us into another dimension.
What does the VIA International Festival consist of this year?
Thirteen different artistic groups are performing in Mons, Maubeuge and Feignies, offering a contemporary eclectic mix of theatre, dance, music and electronic arts.
A dive into Chilean culture with the Teatro Cinema, as well as into Japanese, with the return of visual artist and choreographer Hiroaki Umeda, and the new musical creations of l’Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles with Bruno Letort.
Reflection on memory, on the one hand by the Belgian actress Lies Pauwels (For All the Wrong Reasons [English, French subtitles]), which reveals the comedy that Man plays to himself and, on the other, by the New York-based Temporary Distortion with their theatrical/cinematic, Welcome to Nowhere (Bullet Hole Road)’ [English, French subtitles], a cross between a love story and a road movie.
Finally, Mmm…, a rediscovery of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, with the explosive dance theatre of the Michael Clark Company.
Below please find two of the shows performed during the Festival VIA08: Sin Sangre [Without Blood], awarded Best Theatre Production of 2007 by the Critics Circle of Art, and Lignes (Lines).
LIGNES (LINES)
Thursday 20 March at 2030 hours at LE MANÈGE
Rue des Passages, 1 – 7000 Mons
065/39.59.39
www.lemanege.com
www.musiquesnouvelles.com
Lignes is the cult novel by Ryu Murakami.
Lignes are the drawings painted by Denis Deprez, drawings that will be recomposed live by the VJ Yuki Kawamura.
Lignes (Lines) is mostly Bruno Letort's music mixing electronical music and acoustical music with the musicians of l’Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. The whole Comics/VJ/Electro/Contempo event will take place during the Festival Les Nuits Botanique in Brussels.
Bruno Letort, Sound Smuggler
by Philippe Franck
An unrepentant traveller between genres and frontiers, which he joyfully transgresses, Bruno Letort is also a composer, journalist, producer, festival organiser, artistic director of collections and record labels, and a verbose interdisciplinary and resolutely “indisciplinary” artist to whom Musiques Nouvelles was given free rein for a creation in May 2007 as part of Nuits Botanique. “I was very interested by the proposition of Jean-Paul Dessy to compose for the l’Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles, with a free rein as much for the subject as for the orchestral nomenclature.”
“This interest for Musiques Nouvelles is born of a mutual admiration - I love their decadence! Historically, we started with a rather institutional contemporary musical ensemble that was kick-started by a positive decadence. I am thinking especially of the many electro-contempo experiments with DJ Olive, David Shea or even Scanner which have excited me”, he exclaimed. Bruno Letort collaborates with several comic strip creators, such as Schuiten and Peeters, and Denis Deprez. A smuggler between genres and disciplines, public and performances, his approach is making waves in France where “ being radical is certainly more highly considered than this type of smuggling.” As an artist, spectator and informed audience, his regard on today’s sonic performance is one that questions and refuses. “All the games and varied configurations which feed my journey seem to me a series of immaturities, which I steadfastly claim as my own.”
Sin Sangre [Sans Sang] [Without Blood]
Teatro Cinema Company – CHILE
Performance in Spanish, sub-titled in French
Friday, 14 and Saturday, 15 March at 2030 hrs; Sunday, 16 March at 1600 hrs
Théatre le Manège (Rue des passages, 1 – Mons).
The Project is a theatrical adaptation by the Teatro Cinema Company of the novel Senza Sangue by Italian author Alessandro Baricco, which they translated from Italian to Spanish.
Teatro Cinema Company – CHILE
The company La Troppa [The Troop] was created in 1987, by a troop of artists marching across the demolished horizons of the cultural decay that Chile had been pushed to. With this spirit they broke through with unique pieces such as El Santo Patrono, Rap del Quijote, Lobo, Salmón Vudú, Viaje al Centro de la Tierra, Pinocchio, Jesús Betz and Gemelos. Their productions were appreciated worldwide by thousands of spectators in North and South America, in Europe and Asia. Nineteen years later, during 2006, after the departure of some and the arrival of many others, the Company re-organised as Teatro Cinema, a collective of artists from various disciplines, gathered by the mutual quest for beauty, poetry, literature, image and music.
Cine Theatre
This new production, Sin Sangre [Without Blood] will inaugurate a new language in theatre, merging in scenes the criteria and techniques of both theatre and cinema. It will certainly be, for the audiences, surprising and confusing, but also an opportunity for them to plunge into the very essense of life and time. Their esthetical goal is to create a fusion (con-fusion) of virtual reality with physical reality; to make the border between cinema and theatre somewhat diffuse and uncertain.
Synopsis
Setting: A tranquil evening at the farm of Mato Rujo. Suddenly, three armed men appear and ambush the small country house. Manuel Roca, trapped, hides his little daughter in order to save her, but he can do nothing to spare the life of neither his young boy... nor his own.
The gunmen are after him for political revenge, not justice. Once the slaughter concludes, the youngest of the killers finds the girl in her hideaway. Something inexplicable implores him not to tell his fellow murderers. The killers walk away after burning the house down.
Decades later, the girl has survived and turned into a mature and ruthless avenger. There is only one target left in order to conclude her mission. When the woman approaches him, the remaining killer understands his time has come. But they talk, and the conversation unleashes a dam of histories and interpretations.
Finally, it all makes sense for those two lost souls, wrecked in a dark ocean of violence and spilled blood.
RESERVATIONS
Le Manège.mons (Belgium)
For tickets call 065/39.59.39 or e-mail: tickets@lemanege-mons.be
From Tuesday to Saturday 1000 to 1300 hours and 1400 to 1700 hours
For more info or group reservation call Florence Angelici at 065/39.98.14