Tozai!..., 2014
The “before”
My first piece, Mua, was focused on what happens before an event, and the origins of that as well. Some eighteen years later, this same question came back to me. At performances, I have always liked the moment before the event begins, the dimming of the house lights, if any, the sound of the curtain being raised. It’s the moment in the ritual which tells us: "it’s going to start". And we switch over internally to our “spectator” mode. In Europe, iron safety curtains, heavy red, gold and black drapes, in velvet, cloth, scrims, a cyc and painted canvases, take charge of this moment and run with it. We, the spectators, see this unveiling, to which frankly we don’t pay much attention. As if it indeed were announcing the importance of what is to come, but then it fades away, bowing out, as it were.
I would like to examine this moment and place it at the heart of my next piece, restoring its value as an event on its own. My attendance at performances at classical Japanese theatres has reinforced my interest in this particular activity of revelation and disappearing. In traditional Bunraku puppet theatre, there is often a first, heavy curtain, a fancy one constructed in heavy fabrics like tapestry, which greets the audience as it enters the theatre. It disappears vertically into the theatre flies, revealing a striped green, black and red curtain which then also disappears. A black curtain appears while a veiled propmaster comes to present the piece which will be performed. He lets out a long and powerful cry,“Tôzaiiiiii ….” (meaning “from East to West”) which often resonates all the way to the wings of the stage, and then the black curtain is chased away by a body rolled up in fabric. The silhouette, on the run, is quite visible in this horizontal movement. Sometimes, depending on the plot of the piece, a sky blue curtain, called Asagimaku, masking the preparation of a set piece, is dropped suddenly from the flies, creating a surprise and driving the storytelling.
There is a real vertical and horizontal choreographic action here, including both the reveal and the flyaway disappearance. In a sense, the theatre is a machine for seeing and the curtain is its eyelid. The theatre presents the act of seeing as well as framing images. And the curtain chants, splits, separates, allows for an ellipse, shapes an image, a meaning and its transformation. As the fluttering of an eyelid or a period of restful sleep allows us to continue seeing.
In the cry of “Tôzai,” I hear a call, an overture. The upcoming event is already vibrating within that call. The theatre as an opening and permanent fluttering.
Tôzai!..., the eponymous choreographic work, will make this annunciation its subject.
Tôzai!...is like a delicately layered pastry of openings, a permanent fluttering, a swirling and unfurling of curtains.
photos © Marc Domage
Teaser "TÔZAI!..." from Plateforme Mùa on Vimeo.
Distribution / Credits
Conception and choreography Emmanuelle Huynh
Collaboration, assistant to the choreographer Pascal Queneau
Sound design Matthieu Doze
Lighting Sylvie Garot
Spatial design Jocelyn Cottencin
Costumes Babeth Tensorer & Jocelyn Cottencin
Resources Isabelle Launay
Collaborator for research in Japan Patrick De Vos
Production Director Christophe Poux
Fabrication and performance Katerina Andreou, Jérome Andrieu, Bryan Campbell, Volmir Cordeiro, Madeleine Fournier & Emmanuelle Huynh
Dancers associated with the work Lisa Miramond & Sonia Garcia
Production Compagnie Múa
Coproduction Centre national de danse contemporaine - Angers, L’apostrophe – scène nationale in Cergy-Pontoise and the Val d’Oise, Théâtre Garonne - european scene, Le Théâtre scène nationale in Saint-Nazaire, Le Manège in Reims, Arcadi Ile-de-France, Le Musée de la Danse / Centre chorégraphique national in Rennes and Britany, Centre Chorégraphique National in Caen / Basse Normandie under the auspices of the Accueil studio program, Centre Chorégraphique National in Grenoble under the auspices of Accueil Studio 2014, Centre chorégraphique national in Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon - residency program
With support from the French Embassy/ French Institute in Japan and from the Collectif Danse Rennes Métropole
Press
Gérard Mayen article - Mouvement
Unidivers.fr le webzine de Rennes - 2014 February 5
Le Clou dans la Planche.com - 2014 October 3
Tôzai!...Théâtre Garonne - Prélude au spectacle
DanserCanalHistorique.com 2014 November 15 / festival Instances
Interview on local radio RGB FM - 2015 January
Documentary
Emmanuelle Huynh - Tôzai!... / dans les coulisses