Crowd

To the sounds of a real rave party with top DJ Peter Rehberg on the decks, in “Crowd” by Giselle Vienne, we watch the bodies of 15 young dancers form themselves into an endless series of images in very slow motion, on 17 & 18 November, on the main stage of the Onassis Stegi.

With a background that includes film, Giselle Vienne creates an astonishingly precise score with movements in place of notes. Each of the movements is informed by a particular cinematic effect-like slow motion, freeze frame, or the "jerky" repetition of a .gif file.
The flow of the movements is interrupted, then sets off afresh in a different direction. These ongoing “tableaux vivants” reveal the ecstatic, almost religious, dimension of enjoyment, but also the entirely unconscious violence, fertility-bringing violence like that of some ancient ritual. Unfamiliar but surprisingly beautiful, the “Crowd” draws the gaze like a magnet.

Credits

Conception, choreography and scenography: Gisèle Vienne
Assisted by: Anja Röttgerkamp and Nuria Guiu Sagarra
Lights: Patrick Riou
Dramaturgy: Gisèle Vienne and Denis Cooper
Edits, playlist selection: Peter Rehberg
Sound diffusion supervisor: Stephen O’Malley
Costumes: Gisèle Vienne in collaboration with Camille Queval and the performers Sound engineer: Adrien Michel
Technical manager: Richard Pierre
Stage manager: Antoine Hordé
Light manager: Arnaud Lavisse
Production & booking: Alma Office, Anne-Lise Gobin, Alix Sarrade & Camille Queval
Administration: Etienne Hunsinger

Executive producer: DACM

Music selections from Underground Resistance, KTL, Vapour Space, DJ Rolando, Drexciya, The Martian, Choice, Jeff Mills, Peter Rehberg, Manuel Göttsching, Sun Electric and Global Communication

Performers: Philip Berlin, Marine Chesnais, Kerstin Daley-Baradel, Sylvain Decloitre, Sophie Demeyer, Vincent Dupuy, Massimo Fusco, Rémi Hollant, Oskar Landström, Theo Livesey, Louise Perming, Katia Petrowick, Jonathan Schatz, Henrietta Wallberg and Tyra Wigg

Special thanks: Margret Sara Guðjónsdóttir and Louise Bentkowski.

Co-producers: Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, centre dramatique national / Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg – Scène européenne / Wiener Festwochen / Manège, scène nationale - reims / Théâtre national de Bretagne, direction Arthur Nauzyciel / Centre Dramatique National Orléans/Loiret/Centre / La Filature, Scène nationale - Mulhouse / BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen.
Support: CCN2 – Centre Chorégraphique national de Grenoble / CND Centre national de la danse

The Company Gisèle Vienne is supported by Ministère de la culture et de la communication – DRAC Grand Est, la Région Grand Est and Ville de Strasbourg.

The company is supported by Institut Français for international touring.

Gisèle Vienne is associate artist at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, centre dramatique national and at the Théâtre national de Bretagne, direction Arthur Nauzyciel.

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Looking back at the early 90s, when she first surrendered herself to Berlin's clubbing and theater scene, Gisèle Vienne invites the celebrated electronic music composer Peter Rehberg to choose the tracks for the rave party in “Crowd” soundtrack.

Peter Rehberg, composer and founder of the Éditions Mego label, was awarded the Ars Electronica in 1999, the year in which Gisèle Vienne made her directorial debut.
Rehberg selects a series of recordings which clearly reference the Detroit scene, along with tracks by, among others, Jeff Mills, Underground Resistance and Drexciya, which defined the sound of Berlin's club scene, and music he himself wrote in collaboration with Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))). These sounds, which have accompanied our lives for thirty years now as they have made their way out of the rave underground into more mainstream appearances in the soundscape of our contemporary everyday, provide the first of Crowd's defining axes.

The second axis is the dramaturgy of the author Dennis Cooper, Gisèle Vienne's creative partner since 2004. Having made his name with the five autobiographical novels that form the "George Miles Cycle", the New York writer, poet, critic and curator has served as a role model for many younger writers. His work contains numerous references to the underground and independent musical scenes, with which he has close ties.
Gisèle Vienne, the choreographer and director of Franco-Austrian descent, was born in 1976. Having studied Philosophy and Music, she attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières.