« (Not) a love song »

Dance - Musical_   20-24 November 2007

What is the link between (Not) a love song and Les Inconsolés?
I think (Not) a love song is a sort of reply to Les Inconsolés in order to free myself from this previous show, which has been a memorable experience, both artistically and psychologically. I was so upset by how the show had been ignored by professionals, that I had to mourn my expectations. I had discovered a lot with Les Inconsolés and felt a very strong commitment to it. It is by far my most personal and autobiographical work. I shared this commitment with the performers, and together we managed to go into difficult, dark areas, that we didn’t particularly want to explore sometimes. As a consequence, (Not) a love song took a long time to emerge. There have been a lot of changes between the initial project and what it ended up becoming. At the beginning, I wanted to deal with the characters of two old actresses who used to be famous. When happens after that? Nothing, the phone stays silent, no more parts and only past movies to live on. I had in mind as a model the great Gloria Swanson of Sunset Boulevard (by Billy Wilder - 1950). As time passed the project has changed, it got a little lighter, but I would still like to work one day with very old actresses.

Cinema is very present in your work, is it something that exerts great fascination on you?
There are two main star systems in the artistic world, rock and cinema. I feel closer to cinema. For example, I wanted to work with Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, but the show has developed around the songs. When I fist met with my team, we worked together on about 30 selected tracks and during our second meeting, in order to create material, we watched a few old movies to see the stars act and their posture. We have worked on two great cathartic figures: Marlene Dietrich and Maria Callas. They both act in a very minimalist way on screen or on stage. In many of her films, Maria Callas is completely still while she sings Mozart in magnificent dresses by Yves Saint Laurent with just a little broche at the top. She is totally still and suddenly she touches the broche and then lets her arm go... it’s sublime. Totally explosive. It joins all of my minimalist obsessions of “less is more”. I allowed myself lots of things, more “more” than “less”, for example with jazz dance tracks.

In this show, there is a sheer pleasure and joy of moving…
The three singers have very different ranges. When Miguel sings Pleurez mes yeux, it always sends shivers down my spine. I never before allowed myself to enjoy music this way on stage. The voice gives you a very peculiar sense of pleasure that is more evident than with movements.

How did your work develop?
It all revolves around the music and the songs. The main thing for me was to adapt the original music, change its musical style, and modify certain versions. For example with the fado version of a Lou Reed song, we have found that one straight away. But we still had to choose between creating a great recital, with no directing, and that was enough for me, or doing something with the gaps between the songs and forge a link between them. Actually the show got written from the song lyrics. I wanted to create a lot of nods and references between the songs, their references or content, which we don’t always listen to. Finally, the French and English subtitles give the content of the songs a very different meaning. As regards stage design, I knew that I wanted a decor somewhere between the closed doors of Petra von Kant’s apartment and a television studio. The installation is visually very successful and as for the clothes I couldn’t dress them in H&M clothes. We avoid the pitfall of the stage looking like a catwalk, but each outfit has a link to what is said in the song or the play.

There is a nostalgic dimension to the play, a kind of lost chic paradise...
I think there is something that is totally in keeping with Les Inconsolés. For example, all the musical references are songs I used to listen to when I was a teenager or young adult. At the same time, I wanted to create a timeless mix. It was important to me to pay attention to the lyrics: Kurt Weill’s Je ne t’aime pas and The Ballad of Sexual Dependency are veiled references. But Good Boy was a song title too, and I use a song by PIL (Public Image Limited) in my first show. At that time it was totally incongruous, people used Steve Reich or contemporary music. I’ve always loved singers, who sing about fundamental things in a raw fashion. It’s my cheesy side, which I allowed myself to show on stage for the first time.

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