Gisèle Vienne (France)
Kindertotenlieder
(translates as Songs for dead children )

Sunday 21 October
8pm
Sandfield Theatre
£9.00 / £7.00 Conc.
Duration: 1hr 15min

From the snowy mountains of Austria a disturbing folk ritual is replayed by teenagers wearing Gothic clothes, drinking to the sound of Black metal music. Dark and misty, this tale slowly unfolds making you slightly nervous. The scenes feel oddly familiar: the drinking, the desire, the questions about who you are, the confusion of teenage hormones, the fear of the unknown.

The inspiration for Kindertotenlieder comes directly from the Austrian custom related to the ‘Perchten', creatures who are said to appear mid-winter to offer protection against demons and to punish cursed souls. This custom is still alive today and inevitably stirs in us fantasies of cruelty, innocence and expiation. What do these fantasies mean? Is our society in need of cathartic rituals? Why are they so powerful?

With this visually stunning piece, French artist Gisèle Vienne and her collaborators have created a world where real performers meet striking life size dolls and where fantasies are let loose. The live music is strangely seductive, relentlessly delivered by KTL, Peter Rehberg (Pita) and Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))).

Kindertotenlieder achieves this rare moment of theatre, when reality meets the surreal with an intensity that only live work is capable of achieving.

nottdance is supported by the Institut Francais du Royaume-Uni, London (French Cultural Institute in the UK ) and Cultures France.

“The choreographer makes bedfellows of the archaic and the contemporary in order to explore the issue of collective fantasies. A blend of morbidity and delight.” - Ouest France

Please note this performances features adult content.

Associate producer: DACM
Coproduction: Le Quartz - Scène nationale de Brest, Les Subsistances 2007 / Lyon, Centre Chorégraphique National de Franche-Comté à Belfort dans le cadre de l'accueil-studio, Centre national de danse contemporaine d'Angers

With the support of the Drac Rhône-Alpes / Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Région Rhône-Alpes, Ville de Grenoble, DICREAM / Ministère de la culture et de la communication and Étant donnés, the French-American fund for the performing arts, a program of Face. With the support of the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier Languedoc -Roussillon and of Point Ephémère à Paris .

Gisèle Vienne and Kindertotenlieder

Here is a short text by Gisèle giving contextualisation and elements of interpretation for her latest piece.

“Kindertotenlieder examines the representation of dread, in relation to the representation of death, and the constant proximity in which it remains with human properties such as the body's physical appearance and behaviour. The representation of dread and the horrifying leads to what Sigmund Freud called the “uncanny”: the representation of something both familiar and alien, and consequently disturbing. It therefore constitutes
a great trigger of cathartic experiences characterising ceremonies, rituals and shows, such as the one we are concerned with.

The stage, in this case, and in general, is a place where one can call to and resuscitate the dead. Between dream and reality, performers blend in the play, through their appearance and movements, with other characters represented by artificial or altered bodies - moving or limp - who create this feeling of the uncanny linked to death by mimicking life.

My work usually centres on the relationship between natural and artificial bodies.
On this project it will be more precisely focused on how the body is represented in traditional Austrian iconography. This will allow me to tackle the issue of the representation of death and the horrifying. More particularly, Kindertotenlieder
works on the custom related to the ‘Perchten', creatures who appear mid-winter to offer protection against demons and to punish cursed souls. This custom is still
alive today and stirs in us fantasies of cruelty, innocence and expiation.

Through this work, I am keen to examine the meaning of the fantasies expressed through this custom. I would also like to explore the confusion that may occur between the official events where this fantasy is expressed - such as ceremonies - and reality.

Dennis Cooper has written a text exploring these issues. If my work so far was dealing with the relationship between truth and fiction in a personal and intimate setting, this
?new work examines the confusion between fantasy and reality, in a collective context.”

Gisèle Vienne
Gisèle Vienne was born in 1976, and now lives and works in Paris and Grenoble . After graduating in philosophy, she studied at the puppeteering school Ecole supérieure nationale des Arts de la Marionnette from 1996 to 1999. She then choreographed and staged Splendid's by Jean Genet in 2000, ShowRoomDummies in 2001, Stéréotypie
in 2003, and Tranen Veinzen in 2004 with Etienne Bideau-Rey. Since 2004, she has choreographed and directed I Apologize and Une belle enfant blonde / A young, beautiful blond girl (first production 2005). Together with Etienne Bideau-Rey, she has written two publications, Corps/Objet – Sur le rapport du corps au corps artificiel , published by the Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble.

www.g-v.fr

KTL the band
The live music by Stephen O'Malley and Peter Rehberg is an integral part of Kindertotenlieder as much as it is now a band touring and recording in its own right under the name KTL. To listen to extracts of KTL and for the artists' discographies visit www.myspace.com/ktlrule