Showroomdummies #4

Originally created in 2001 with Étienne Bideau-Rey, Showroomdummies has endured for two decades, regularly reborn in varied iterations through a tradition of rewriting that has become part of its identity. Refined, redesigned and reread, this work exists as a permanent dialogue with itself, its age and its authors.

Showroomdummies blends dance, theatre and visual arts in a disconcerting performance on the body’s connection to artificialized bodies and bodily portrayals, as well as power relationships. Although loosely based on Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1870), the show draws even greater inspiration from Gilles Deleuze’s analysis of the novella in Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty, centered on the art of suspense and subversion. The slow, mechanical choreography focuses on the boundary between the animate and the inanimate, the incarnate and the discarnate, in a mixture of coldness and sensuality. Over the years, Étienne Bideau-Rey and Gisèle Vienne have made the rewriting process an integral part of a show that could well be considered as the first draft of a future piece. Fundamental aspects of the two artists’ work, revealed through this creation, are confronted with other more recently developed themes. First performed at ROHM Theatre Kyoto in February 2020, the fourth incarnation of Showroomdummies tackles silent power relationships through bodily motion.

Vincent Théval for the Festival d’Automne à Paris

Photo: Showroomdummies – Gisèle Vienne © Alain Monot