MANIFESTO BY AKAJI MARO

フランソワ・シェニョ―の存在に、私麿赤兒が見たものは、

瞬時の中の永遠、悪徳・背徳の系譜、逆流する血のエロティスズムだ。

それらを静かに秘めたる彼の肉体が最後に戴冠するものは、いかなるものか！

麿赤兒はその人智では計り知れない価値の戴冠に、司祭としての位置に立つと言うことだ。

その総体はきたるべき人類の未来を見据え、その未来をいかに生きるかと言う、身を賭したレッスンのダンスでもある。

麿赤兒

What I, Akaji Maro, saw in François Chaignaud was eternity in an instant, the genealogy of vice and immorality, the eroticism of blood flowing backward.

His flesh calmly conceals all that. What will finally come and crown it?

For the crowning of these values unintelligible to man, Akaji Maro will serve as priest.

In the end, this will also be a dance of coming-of-age with our bodies at stake, staring into the future of humanity and questioning the ways to live in it.

Akaji Maro

“The encounter between Akaji Maro and François Chaignaud is the meeting of two bodies with radically different ages, cultures and traditions. Yet, both of them express a vision of dance as the locus for an endless experience of the transformative potentialities of the body. An interwoven portrait of two sensibilities, GOLD SHOWER unfolds multiple layers of meaning, stirring up trouble within flesh, gender and history. A 70-year-old butoh pioneer whose dancing work explores emptiness and the grotesque meets a singular metamorphosis artist, singer and performer working at the crossroads of the classical tradition and non-scenic dances. The result is a parade where seriousness turns into frivolity, where the epicene, extravagance, and outrageousness prevail. Immersed into a state of continuous incandescence, we witness the dancing of a secret rite in which play, idiocy, perversion, and metamorphosis become ways for people to connect, to become aware of each other, to introduce themselves.

Bodies brush past each other, exchanging their voices and their fluids: they become empty, permeable, accessible, at once debilitated and powerful. The rhythmic unity, the vital force they radiate possesses something of a mythological dimension. The spectacle of a continuous rebellion of the flesh through fiction and artifice, GOLD SHOWER generates indelible images of what is most foreign to the body: itself.”

Baudouin Woehl & François Chaignaud

Concept and performance François Chaignaud and Akaji Maro

Costumes Romain Brau, Cédrick Debeuf, Kyoko Domoto

Omote (japanese theater mask) Seitaro Ozu

Lights conception Abigail Flowler

Setting François Chaignaud, Abigail Fowler, Akaji Maro

Sound manager Caroline Mas

Japanese interpreter Mohamed Ghanem

Assistant for Akaji Maro Naomi Muku (Dairakudakan)

Artistic collaborator for François Chaignaud Baudouin Woehl

Administration/production Garance Roggero, Jeanne Lefèvre, Clémentine Rougier, Léa Turner

Diffusion Sarah de Ganck/ART HAPPENS

Special thanks to Dominique Laulanné, Aya Soejima, Kei Osawa, Yoko Shinfune and all the team from Dairakudakan.

PRODUCTION VLOVAJOB PRU

COPRODUCTION

Pôle européen de création – Ministère de la Culture/Maison de la Danse en soutien à la Biennale de la danse de Lyon 2020 — Maison de la musique de Nanterre, scène conventionnée — Bonlieu scène nationale Annecy — Charleroi danse, centre chorégraphique de Wallonie, Brussels — Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse, Paris — Le Quartz, Scène nationale de Brest — Teatro Municipal do Porto — Manège, Scène nationale – Reims — Setagaya Public Theatre, Tokyo — The Japan Foundation — Festival d’Automne à Paris — Conseil Régional Auvergne Rhône Alpes

WITH THE SUPPORT FROM Le Regard du Cygne, Paris — La Villette Paris — Nanterre-Amandiers, centre dramatique national

With the artistic participation of Jeune théâtre national