12 MARCH - 21 MARCH 2009

Gisèle Vienne
Étienne Bideau-Rey

Showroomdummies
Éternelle idole

DANCE

Inspired by a free-ranging, intense, fantastical exploration of innocence and crime, Showroomdummies (presented by puppeteers, directors and choreographers Etienne Bideau-Rey and Gisèle Vienne) and Éternelle Idole (presented par Gisèle Vienne) are hymns to the turbulent ambiguity of visual beauty.

Showroomdummies, premièred in 2001 and re-written in 2009, explores the forces of eroticism and repulsion that connect the living body with its stylised representation. Inspired by Sacher-Masoch's text Venus in Furs, the choreography explores the emotions aroused by the human appearance of disturbingly immobile, impassive mannequins. On the borderline of the animate and inanimate, the dancer's gestures echo the mannequin's pose: a poignant presence given further ambiguity by its close similarity to an evocation of death.

Premièred in 2009, Eternelle Idole features a young, 21-year-old figure skater whos disturbingly adolescent appearance conjures the spectre of a murdered Lolita, with original music by Stephen O’Malley. Set on an ice rink, the fragility and power of adolescence challenge our perception of beauty through its ghostly distortion in time. All beauty is residual: the sophisticated sublimation of innocence, the repression and metamorphosis of a catastrophe.

Gisèle Vienne's works examine the body, movement, matter, the visual arts, music and the spoken word; her pieces constantly revisit, and are structured by, the intermingling of passion and rationality at the heart of fantasy and ritual. The indelible trace of George Bataille's part maudite ("cursed part"), slipping insidiously or with violence into the real world, touching eroticism and political behaviour alike.