Photo : Michèle © DR
New Work
Michèle
Patrice de Bénédetti
(France)
Choreographic solo in a memory-driven and feminist hand-to-hand combat
From the age of 10
As the last part of Patrice de Bénédetti’s trilogy, which began in 2014 with Jean, solo pour un monument aux morts, for his father, followed by Vous êtes ici, in 2018, for his brother, Michèle is dedicated to his mother. It is a tribute that takes place on a bench, and for the first time in his writing uses personal accounts. This new and final instalment premiers to complete the “trilogy” that will be performed over three days at the festival, immersing us into the fascinating world of Patrice de Bénédetti, a dancer and artist who is definitely unlike any other.

It seems like the end of Patrice de Bénédetti’s layered writing process, which has guided the trilogy up to now, from a small story to an important one, from his father’s nudging to the words of the great Jaurès (Jean, solo pour un monument aux morts), from the brother’s luminous outbursts in a stadium to the millions of stars in the eyes of the children from poor neighbourhoods (Vous êtes ici). Can you really distance your own story from History when it comes to your own mother and a “life trajectory that is nothing spectacular or extraordinary”? How can you avoid “speaking for a woman” and her challenging circumstances when you are a male dancer?

And yet, this is the portrait of a woman born in 1953, in the working-class neighbourhood of Saint-André, in Marseille, with two sisters and a brother, who meets Jean at the age of seventeen and becomes mother of a certain Patrice, three days before her eighteenth birthday. By staging it around a bench, which acts as both a prop and a partner, and a narrative that draws on stories, the writer and choreographer explores the ability to forget oneself for decades, and the notions of courage, survival instinct, strength, self-sacrifice, and, in the end, faith. “Like my mother, faith is discreet but tenacious, written in the margin, but indelible. Like my mother,” he writes in his working notes. Once again, it is a magnificent intimate and autobiographical work, transcended by tenderness, finesse, dance and movement.

BIOGRAPHY

> PATRICE DE BÉNÉDETTI (France)

Born in Marseille in 1971, Patrice de Bénédetti started out as a musician (bass player in the group Tarif Réduit), before discovering street theatre and collaborating with the companies Karnavire and Inflammable. In addition to his work as a composer, he joined the Ex Nihilo and Le Nomade Village collectives, as well as the Uz et Coutûmes company, to focus on dancing. He founded the P2BYM company with choreographer and dancer Yui Mitsuhashi, creating works for public space, such as Ôdan-hodô, Soto and Shûten. In Jean, his first solo creation from 2014, he pays tribute to his father for the Centenary of the First World War. With his 2018 solo production, Vous êtes ici, he focuses on his brother and the world of sports. For his latest piece, Michèle (2022), he places his mother at the heart of his work, in the final instalment of this magnificent personal choreographed trilogy that touches on universal themes. It is an adventure in dance and writing that Les Tombées de la Nuit has been following for seven years.

DISTRIBUTION

Patrice De Bénédetti : auteur, chorégraphe, scénographe et interprète

Sunday 10 July 2022
18:00 > 18:40
Parc des Tanneurs, rue Saint-Martin, Rennes

40mn
Free
Bus : 12, Arrêt Auberge de Jeunesse • Vélo Star : 158 rue de Saint-Malo

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The association is supported by the City of Rennes, the Brittany Region, the Ille-et-Vilaine Department & the ministry of culture.

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