IRIS

A Parisian swimming pool plays host to a performative installation focusing on paralympic swimmers and a choir. From the pool basins to the dressing rooms, Alessandro Sciarroni conjures up an imaginary place in which the audience is encouraged to move around freely, in a dream-like sound environment.

Alessandro Sciarroni made his mark on the European stage in 2012 with his emblematic trilogy Will you still love me tomorrow?, a work of great formal rigour based on traditional dance, juggling and goalball, a sport for the visually-impaired and the blind. Setting out each time to create the unexpected, he distinguished himself during the 2022 edition of the Festival d’Automne by creating a remarkable site-specific piece in the former Centquatre stables. Surprises of all kind become possible when the axes of his research converge on paralympic swimmers and a choir made up of performers in the Butte-aux-Cailles swimming pool. By taking over all the different parts of this historic place with its art-nouveau architecture, the choreographer creates a heterotopia, an unworldly space in which homage is paid to the beauty and fragility of life. This performance between art and sport uses as its reference point the Paris Olympic games, and in particular its less media-friendly facet, the Paralympic Games.

Texte: © Thomas Hahn

Photo: © Alessandro Sciarroni