FESTIVAL KIDS | L’après-midi d’un Foehn
BAG FOR LIFE
Forget carrying your shopping in them, Company Non Nova has a far more interesting use for the carrier bag, discovers Kelly Apter
M any dancers have been described as ‘dancing on dancing on Foehn really air’. But the stars of l’Après-midi d’un Foehn really no formal do. Unlike other dancers, they’ve had no formal ear no cos- training, don’t attend class, never rehearse and wear no cos- e of plastic. tumes or make-up. Largely because they’re all made of plastic. mpany Non The brainchild of Phia Mènard of France’s Company Non it its full Nova, l’Après-midi d’un Foehn Version 1 (to give it its full propelled title) is performed by dozens of empty carrier bags, propelled eir ‘ballet upwards on currents of air, and controlled by their ‘ballet master’, performer Jean-Louis Ouvrard.
ure,’ says ‘My work with plastic materials is an adventure,’ says a tempest Mènard. ‘It began when I used fans to create a tempest received of ‘snow’, to make a dancer disappear. Then I received urelle in a commission from the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in ag dance Nantes, France, and decided to make a plastic bag dance t for this around at ground level. That was the starting point for this show.’ e’, both Mènard says she created the work ‘for everyone’, both t won’t adults and children. At just 25 minutes long, it won’t has the challenge tiny attention spans, and everyone has the ags. opportunity to get up close and personal with the bags. xplains ‘The audience sits in a circle around the stage,’ explains kes the Mènard, ‘in order to create the vortex which makes the und the bags move. The fact that the spectators are all around the of trick space also stops them thinking that there is a kind of trick actions going on. And it’s a way of everyone sharing the reactions
‘Nothing about this show is totally
predictable’
and responses of other audience members, too.’ very Those reactions are likely to be different at every h a performance, because as you’d expect with such a me. maverick dance troupe, no two shows are the same. ays ‘Nothing about this show is totally predictable,’ says me. Mènard, ‘and that is very much what interests me. can It’s only the ballet master’s movements that we can control.’
y’s As the title suggests, the show is set to Debussy’s he Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the y’s Afternoon of a Faun), and partly inspired by Nijinsky’s controversial 1912 ballet of the same name. ns ‘I chose Debussy’s music for its beauty,’ explains in Mènard, ‘but also because of the revolution in n choreographic form that Nijinsky made with it.’ In e that sense, l’Après-midi d’un Foehn Version 1 is, she says, ‘a form of homage’.
w, According to Mènard, what we make of the show, e and those colourful carrier bags swirling above o our heads looking more and more human, is up to us. ‘There are several ways of responding to this work,’ she says. ‘What interests me is allowing the spectator free rein with their imagination.’
Summerhall, 0845 874 3001, 2–25 Aug (not 6, 11–12, 17–18, 22), 2pm & 5pm, £10 (£7). 62 THE LIST FESTIVAL 1–8 Aug 2013