ARCHIVES 2011 / Le Cabaret discrépant

You're not familiar with Lettrism? Neither was Olivia Grandville until a friend gave her a small manual on dance, with a preface by the leader of this movement: Isidore Isou. In it, she discovered with surprise and delight an incredible treasure-trove of theoretical writings and works "to be completed or invented" that, though dating from the 1950s, reflect the current issues of choreographic art. Thus emerged the idea of Le Cabaret discrépant whose title evokes those of Fluxus and Dada. This choreographic fugue notably gives substance to a repertory of 19 "chiselling ballets." From a "ballet for lips" to a "quasi anti-ballet," to "the first gesticulary sonnet", the main thread of a creative and cheering thought unwinds, offering Olivia Grandville and her companions the occasion for a joyous score. Like the initiators of Lettrism, their proposal goes beyond the frames, especially that of the stage, to embrace the polymorphic nature of this trend and permit the spectator to organize his own perspective, coherence and reading. Here, in this free and subversive tribune, bodies have as much to say as words. For a humorous and irreverent tribute to a group of keen young utopians, who dreamt of nothing less than a "heavenly society," in which the values of creation and art would have replaced those of work and money.