Initio, a choreographic Opera

The first act tells of the wanderings of these characters through a dance of prayer or meditation. The second act unfolds in the immanent world of musicians and projects us into the place of the theater and its origins. The narrative then takes the form of a celebration, a profane ritual, where the spectacle is offered as a possible alternative to this quest, transforming the world.

Au plateau, un chœur et des chanteurs grouillent ou tourbillonnent. Des musiciens, un chef d’orchestre au corps habité par le travail chorégraphique, et des danseurs-personnages incarnent la musique, ils se frictionnent avec elle. Après avoir vu et aimé des musiciens mis en scène dans le cycle d’opéras Licht de Stockhausen, nous avons rêvé d’injecter dans le corps des musiciens un langage scénique abstrait et précis, qui part de leur présence d’interprète. Nous voulions ainsi organiser une communion et une horizontalité des présences, sans hiérarchie de langage. Se prendre par la main, se lever, construire ensemble un espace de partage entre les différents artistes jusqu’à inclure le public.

On the stage, a choir and singers swarm and swirl. Musicians, a conductor with a body inhabited by choreographic work, and the dancers embody the music, they rub with it. After seeing and loving musicians staged in the Licht opera cycle by Stockhausen, we dreamed of injecting into the musicians’ bodies an abstract and precise scenic language, which starts from their presence as performers. We thus wanted to organize a communion and a horizontality of the presences, without hierarchy of language. Taking each other by the hand, stand up, building together a space of sharing between different artistic fields ; until including the audience.

Speech navigates between bodies, sound, music and song. Initio is an opera conceived and staged according to a choreographic logic. The work is situated between poetic reverie and opera. Speech navigates between the languages of the body, sound, music and song. The narration is exploded in the service of an open, abstract and colorful sense.