Édito
| The organisation of a new season is always a challenge and an adventure. We still fear, years after years, and particularly after a successful season, not to retrieve equilibrium and the same quality of programmes. But with patience and confidence, we discover throughout the months the creative richness of live shows and the possibility to maintain a high level of quality. It’s that ambition that has guided my work for many years. It’s also important to me that this programme address the most diverse audience possible, and it’s still surprising and reassuring to see that the spectators’ curiosity and fidelity accompany with passion all of our actions, even the more adventurous and unusual. A programme also aims at sharing convictions and dreams, at refusing and denouncing the abuses and discriminations of everyday, but at laughing at it too. In a degraded and more and more oppressing environment, the artist and his creations appear as a landmark, a free word revealing the torments of our society. Like last year, the artistic presence will be permanent and will give birth to five creations. Marcel Bozonnet, our privileged guest, will open the festival Francophonies at Limoges with Baïbars, the Mameluke who became sultan, adaptation of a masterpiece of Arab literature. Jacques Gamblin, one of our greatest actors, will offer us the exclusivity of his poetic and comical universe with Everything is fine, my heart shines. Marie-Christine Soma and Daniel Jeanneteau, other guests of our Maison, will share with us two sides of their talent with Eugène Labiche’s light comedy Street Lourcine case and with the playwright David Keene’s contemporary play Scissors, paper, stone. Our friends from the group Zic Zazou will take us, with their “tools” and “sounds”, into their unique and inimitable musical daydreams. Our raging lives, by the Art Tout Chaud company, will meet in July the audience of Avignon after several months inside our walls. David Krakauer and his partners Fred Wesley et Socalled, will record with a big band their new album, for Label Bleu. The launching will be made during an exceptional evening at the Maison. Our label, despite its difficulties, keeps on producing pearls. | I invite you with pleasure to discover, in the following pages, our programme, but I want to insist on a few powerful moments. The circus retrieves an important place this season with on one hand Johann Le Guillerm and his famous show Secret, and on the other hand the happy members of the Eloize Circus from Quebec with a marvel for children and adults, Rain. Major directors, Patrice Chéreau, Denis Marleau (the Canadian), Guy Cassiers (the Fleming), Jean-François Sivadier, Omar Porras (the Colombian), Jean-Louis Benoit, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, Eric Vigner, Ludovic Lagarde; or young talents, Benjamin Lazar and Mathieu Bauer, make us discover their exciting theatrical universes. Sylvie Testud, Maria de Medeiros, Nathalie Richard, Dominique Valadié and Dominique Blanc, for instance, will be a part of those adventures. The mythical personalities of contemporary dance will present their last works: Philippe Decouflé, Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten (associated to our Maison), Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Israel Galván (outright master of the flamenco dance), Marie Chouinard, Alain Platel and Michèle Anne De Mey. After the huge success of our season dedicated to great Russian piano, we invite you to discover a few “stars” of the 21st century lyrical singing: Philippe Jaroussky, Jennifer Larmore, Sandrine Piau, Matthias Goerne, Marie-Nicole Lemieux and the legendary Felicia Lott. The Orchestra of Picardie will accompany us throughout the year and, with Pascal Verrot, will take us in Russia with Tchaïkovsky’s masterpiece, the opera Eugène Onéguine. Tendance asserts itself as a major art appointment, a week of greedy discoveries, inside and outside our walls. The “no man’s land” will be the driving line of a joyful, curious, peculiar, interdisciplinary (visual arts, dance, music, theatre, and cinema) and undisciplined festival… Besides, the Orson Welles cinema is being renovated and, from September, you will have the possibility to enjoy the comfort of a new room, all in red and black. To conclude, I want to thank each partner we have as well as medias which actively follow the Maison’s projects, and I want to thank the audience for coming. Enjoy the new season. Gilbert Fillinger |
