“As a child, I use to dream about juggling snowballs in Holiday on Ice” says Philippe Ménard, a virtuoso juggler. He now juggles with ice, representing the ice in which he has buried his memories in order to make them numb and immutable. One must accept to see these remains disappear to start a new life, a totally different life, and to banish this childhood where you had to look like a real little boy. When the balls melt and the body slides down into a “position parallel to the floor” (“Position Parallèle au Plancher”, or “P.P.P.”), there is only one thing left to do: reinventing another way to see the world, to “dance” the world. That is when Philippe Ménard lets another equilibrium, another identity emerge, which he hadn’t allowed himself to do so far. With great energy and a superb director’s instinct, he takes us somewhere between juggling, dance and visual arts, deep into our own ambiguities.
“Circus, juggling are ways for me to fulfil my need to write about my experiences and to send it back into the world in which I live.” Philippe Ménard.
How did the P.P.P. project come to life? P.P.P. is a puzzle, like many of my other plays. The first piece of the puzzle originated in Africa, when I was performing in Burkina Faso. In order to cool off, I used to put big ice blocks in front of the fan and I watched them disappear. I found the second piece when I moved out of my house. I was leaving a big house to go and live in a small apartment and that’s when I had to get rid of things I had accumulated, mainly boy things that I had kept for years. I threw them away.
Two stories about disappearance: is that idea at the heart of your work? It is more of a realisation: either you keep everything, and you run out of space and you can’t move anymore and you accept to be on the verge of exploding. Or you get rid of what is nothing more than a memory, and will soon become a burden. To get rid of my boy things was accepting to get rid of an identity which was fake, to embrace my feminine side, to assert a clear identity and be in harmony with what I think this identity should be. As if to say: I do not want to live according to the codes of representation of this boy who is not me.
How does ice come into the mix? Ice is the third piece of the puzzle. This is my story as a juggler, whose obsession is to control objects and who, at some point, wants to face a material which cannot be controlled. This means finally accepting to let go, to provide scope for the escapable. In the art of juggling, you have the technical skill, virtuosity and the way the audience perceives it when asked to see things differently. This is what I worked on as a performer for Jérôme Thomas. Now, I want randomness. At the moment, I hang my ice balls to pieces of strings and they fall down in a random manner. As a juggler, I hang a sword of Damocles over my own head, I discover the object’s trajectory as it falls, pressuring me. There is a real sense of urgency.
How do these two concepts - the identity, the ice - meet? Together with the falling and melting ice and the attempts to catch it and to control it, sounds and voices will emerge of all that accompanied my search for identity for ten years. I recorded them everywhere I performed. By melting, ice will dissolve them. All these voices, mainly female, touched me because they were all saying something about the place of women in society. They became mine because I felt very close to all these women.
But this is going to be a circus show? Yes, but for a while now I have been working on the edge of circus, I can’t really be labelled. This brings me back to my questioning of the genre and identity, and the ‘edge’ where I stand myself on a personal level. Circus, juggling are ways for me to fulfil my need to write about my experiences and to send it back into the world in which I live. At the end of the day, spectators read whatever they want in my shows. In Johannesburg, at the end of my performance with ice, many dancers wanted to see my hands, surprised as they were of this physical work with such a hostile material. I felt that it touched them as an experience but that none of them wanted to be in my shoes. Deep inside, I thought this was an extension of what I was: nobody wants to be in the shoes of a person with a confused identity. Maybe this is the story I try to tell as a circus artist: a role difficult to play for some, elusive for others. This is true I think for all human beings and for me the juggler is an allegory for that. Being obsessed about keeping objects in the air is a useless task with no apparent purpose. Can you really express a lot of things through juggling? I’m not sure. In my shows I had almost stopped juggling. But then I realised that juggling let me discover precious “unjugglable” things: shoes, ice, etc., to continue to progress in roundabout ways. Depending on the paths we follow, we can either give up or find a way to reach what we want to be. It can be destructive or constructive. I want this circus show to open doors for spectators, to suggest possible interpretations. I would like it if this state of consciousness could be useful to others.
Background
In 1991, Philippe Ménard discovered juggling as part of a workshop organised by Compagnie Archiballes. The following year, during the Rencontres Européennes de Jonglage, he saw the work of Jérôme Thomas, who subsequently became his teacher. Ménard became part of his company in 1995. With the creation of his company, Non Nova, in 1996, Philippe Ménard developed his own creative projects with " Non nova, sed nove " (We do not say anything new, we say it in a new way), “Le Grain” (1998), “Ascenseur ?” (2001), “Fresque et sketches premier round” (2002), “Zapptime, rêve éveillé d'un zappeur” (2003), “Jongleur pas confondre” (2004) and “Fresque et sketches second round” (2005), then “Zapptime#remix” (2005 first production performed at Les Subsistances during the Ça Monstre! WeekEnd in April 07).
Distribution & Thanks
Created and Performed by Philippe Ménard. Assistants: Sylvain Julien and Jean-Luc Beaujault. Videos by: Philippe Devilliers and Philippe Ménard. Lighting Design by Robin Decaux. Soundtrack Created by Ivan Roussel. Booking Agent: Elisabete Ferreira. Produced and Administered by Claire Massonnet. Production: P.P.P. was created by the company Non Nova. Co-production & Residence: Les Subsistances / Lyon / France. Coproduced by the circus Jules Verne from Amiens. With the help of: Théâtre de la Cité Internationale de Paris, Institut Français d'Afrique du Sud and Culturesfrance (Culturesfrance and DRAC / Région des Pays de la Loire subsidy), Lieu Unique-Scène Nationale de Nantes, ARC-scène conventionnée de Rezé, Le Grand R, Scène nationale de la Roche-sur- Yon, Office Municipal de la Culture et des Loisirs in Segré and Hippodrome-Scène nationale de Douai. The company Non Nova is subsidised by the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication - DRAC des Pays de la Loire and the Conseil Général de Loire-Atlantique. It also receives the help of Conseil Régional des Pays de la Loire, Ville de Nantes and Culturesfrance.
Dates
Friday 18, Saturday 19, Monday 21, Tuesday 22, Wednesday 23, Thursday 24 January at 7:30pm (No performance on Sunday 20)
Creative/Recreational visit (tour of Les Subsistances followed by an overview of an ongoing project) : Sat 15 Dec 07 at 4pm Babel: 21 Jan 08 after the performance
