I wish I could believe you
Within the plot, as the numbers tick away in a persistent sequined stream, there’s another, more sombre plot. What is going on here is a conspiracy. Let’s imagine the dancers on stage as the instruments of an outrageous and playful conspiracy, in which we have all become bogged down. Let’s say that they have been forced to distract us, just as we are obliged to be distracted. Consider that levity will always prevail over tragedy.
What is dreadful isn’t that nothing will suffice, but the fear that nothing will suffice, that there will never be enough, that things are going to lose their lustre when we touch them, that the mirror balls will lose their dazzle, the mirror snare its allure, become opaque, cease reflecting, reflecting us. What is dreadful, it’s that the things that dazzle us won’t blind us any more.
This 3rd Opus of a trilogy about distraction is necessarily of a different order. It has to be conclusive, or open out on to other perspectives. The piece only refers in a very distant way to the flashy and overrated universe of show business. It dismantles what has been invented. In place of a string of smaller Numbers, it substitutes a single, big, ultimate Number, whose preparation is stretched out in enigmatic fashion and whose end we will probably never see. The characters taking part in it becomemore blurred themselves, to the point of getting mixed up.
In the first two works, with the help of a series of infinitely small signs, of changes in situation, and by drawing out time... one could perceive a more somber theme at work under the glitter and the smiles. Here, it’s amatter of overturning this order of things as the theme becomes evident at the surface and the rest is submerged, wiped out, distanced, leaving behind only a few traces and sequins.
This thread is also what is being woven and plotted. It’s thinking the universe of entertainment as a huge system that works to maintain power, a sort of factory of forgetting. It involves imagining the dancers on stage as the instruments of a playful and outlandish conspiracy, in which we are all trapped. If everything is important, nothing has any importance anymore. Give them bread and games, as the Roman emperors liked to say … What is really terrifying, isn’t that nothing is ever enough, but the fear that nothing is enough, that things are going to lose their shine once we have touched them: the glitter balls will lose their glitter, the mirrors become cloudy, opaque, ceasing to reflect, ceasing to show our reflections.
That which dazzles us, blinds us.
Rather like a set of Russian dolls, this 3rd Opus is at present conceived in 3 acts. Like the unravelling of the strands of a conspiracy, a list of what might be its different elements:
- the enigmatic
- the empathetic
- the fascinating
All this, just like the universe that is the subject of the piece, must preserve a lightness of tone.
Philippe Saire, choreographer
STATEMENT OF INTENTION
« I wish I could believe you » is made up of 3 acts, quite distinct both in terms of their dramatic and aesthetic form. This structure could almost be transposed into cinematographic idiom.
The 1st act, extremely segmented, almost to the point of zapping, presents a series of very short numbers inspired by the world of entertainment. Just as the stage is about to be dismantled, a group of dancers, seemingly under some form of constraint, try at first save the situation, to recreate some sort of distraction, but then finally give up. As is often the case at the circus or in music hall, many of these Numbers evoke disappearance, violence, death, some external force… all of them elements of our fascination with darkness. Thus the music hall cane becomes an instrument of violence, the knife-thrower’s human target moves to dodge the impending threat, tap dancing steps sound like a series of imprecations. In the end, the objects/signs of entertainment have become sufficient unto themselves, automated.
The 2nd act, a sort of long sequence shot, is the most narrative of the three. Here we follow the progress of one character, who represents the figure of the choreographer. Both crafty and naive, he has come to defend the supremacy of the truth of real life experience over the fabrication of the fabulous. At the heart of this discourse on self-fiction, he paradoxically allows himself to be overwhelmed by the very emotive music, by the lyricism and nostalgia that it provokes. Using his naivety as a vector of danger for others, he provokes a series of endless catastrophes.
The 3rd act, a series of long plans, removes any remaining vestiges of reality. The group of dancers is now « automated », reduced to an iconic resemblance of entertainment. Their own bodies seem no longer to belong to them, and even the potential way out offered by the !nal bow provides no means of liberation. Having started as a bad dream, the 3rd act ends in the same vein and gives way to an unsettling, fantasy world.
Philippe Saire, choreographer
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