Speechless Voices Creation 2018 photo : Louise Roy Cie Greffe/ Cindy Van Acker Case Postale 264 1211 Genève 8 www.ciegreffe.org • Contact diffusion Tutu Production/Véronique Maréchal [email protected] T. + 41 22 310 07 62 • Contact administration Sophie Mercier and Cindy Janiaud [email protected] T. + 41 22 310 07 62 Distribution

Choreography : Cindy Van Acker Dance: Stéphanie Bayle, Matthieu Chayrigues, Laure Lescoffi, Raphaëlle Teicher, Rudi van der Merwe, Daniela Zaghini Music : Mika Vainio, J. S. Bach Sound : Samuel Pajand Scenography : Victor Roy Lighting design: Cindy Van Acker and Victor Roy Dramaturgie: Michèle Pralong Costumes and jewellery: Marie Artamonof Lighting technician: Gautier Teuscher Paintings: Eric Vuille Administration : Cindy Janiaud Diffusion : Tutu Production

Production : Cie Greffe Coproduction : Steps, Festival de Danse du Pour-cent culturel Migros, Expedition Suisse : Kaserne Basel, Dampfzentrale Bern, Theater Chur, Gessnerallee Zürich, Théâtre de Vidy Lausanne, and CCN de Rillieux-la-Pape, direction Yuval PICK, dans le cadre du dispositif Accueil-Studio avec le soutien du Théâtre des Îlets, centre dramatique national de Montluçon, région Supports : Loterie Romande, Société Suisse des Auteurs, Fondation du Jubilé, Fondation Stanley Thomas Johnson, Sophie und Karl Binding Stiftung

The Compagnie Greffe has a joint support agreement with the City of Geneva, the Canton of Geneva and Pro Helvetia for the period 2009-2020.

Tour

. Creation at Théâtre de Vidy, Lausanne (Switzerland), April 13th - 15th 2018 . Salle du Lignon, Vernier (Switzerland), April 17th 2018 . Kaserne, Basel (Switzerland), April 20-21st 2018 . Dampfzentrale Bern (Switzerland), April 25th 2018 . Gessnerallee, Zurich (Switzerland), April 27th 2018 . TPR, Moutier (Switzerland), April 29th 2018 . LAC, Lugano (Switzerland), May 1st 2018 . Théâtre de Coire (Switzerland), May 5th 2018 Residencies

. From 29 th of January till 4th of February in the Dampfzentrale, Bern . From 23rd of March till 30th of March at the Montluçon CDN . From 3rd till 12th of April at Théâtre de Vidy, Lausanne Speechless Voices

Strijd for Mika Perhaps it would be necessary to mention the artistic inspirations which Cindy Van Acker surrounded herself with for her last creations : Nietzsche, Nijinski, Nono, Chlebnikov, de Bruyckere, Lutz. All, philosopher, dancer, writer, composer, visual artist, photographer, have faith in the political power which can be carried by an aesthetic action. Everyone works on a way to throw one’s body into battle. If the penultimate solo of Cindy Van Acker, Ion, was almost called strijd, the fight in Flemish, all her pieces could carry this title. And Speechless Voices would then be a strijd for Mika. Mika Vainio : Finnish composer of electronic music who collaborated many times with Cindy Van Acker, who died accidentally in April 2017. This disappearance left a hole in the body of the choreographer (And the Hole in my body will be black / like a Tuft of Horsehair, says a dancer). The performance she planned to create with him became a salute to a friend, dived into darkness, a call for consolation. A choreographic poem, pictorially set up, for six dancers, with the music of the departed. "We had intuitive, intense communication, often without words. We had a common voice which arose elsewhere.” Speechless Voices seeks to create, through dance, a shared language to fill the space, go through the body of the spectators, to connect to the other.

Upon entering this new group piece, the choreographer met another member of the resistance: Pier Paolo Pasolini. She first found the sidereal line of his character Accatone when he falls off his bike and dies on a sidewalk in the Roman suburbs : "Sto bene." " I am well. ". This allowed the choreographer to enter into a relationship to death that is not affliction only. And she also found the Medea of the Italian poet: a barbarous, inflexible figure, painted like a firefly in an eternal survival. Who will give her the power of the rituals she sought. If the movement is here conceived from the inside of the electronic sounds of Mika Vainio, it is also installed in a clear reliance to painting: that of the Belgian artist Michaël Borremans. Speechless Voices places the dancers into a new narrative reality. The usual qualities of Cindy Van Acker's movement - slowness, geometry and abstraction - are colored by figural, readable images, expressive stases. A human community has entered the picture, seeking through the body to ritualize absence and presence, loneliness and relationship, in order to transmute them. The mechanical, vegetable or animal extensions that vitalize most of the Belgian choreographer's pieces thus encounter clearer anthropocentric energies. Producing a dance and dancers who come to put enigmatic sarabandes in motion as pulled out of the paintings of the artist.

Visual surroundings

The scenography of Speechless Voices is inspired by some of the backdrops of the contemporary Belgian painter Michaël Borremans. This places the six dancers in a situation of figures carried away, encrusted, as captured in a pictorial environment that is image. Even when they dance. Borremans has for masters Velasquez, Goya, Manet, and is strongly in a reference / reverence to the greats of painting. This puts the choreographic piece also in a continuity that is evocative of a certain History of the arts. Borremans : "I have always painted culture. Even if I paint a human silhouette, it is a representation of a human silhouette that I want to paint. In my opinion, painting nature is very, very old fashioned. " Thus, where, in Cindy Van Acker's previous pieces, the performers were figures determined by the constraints of the scenography, they are here the raw material of visual production : the dancers become, in a sense, the scenography. A number of archaic rituals have also served as a source of inspiration, both for the composition of the dance and for the creation of jewelery and costumes by the Belgian artist Marie Artamonoff. Rituals, a relationship with the barbarian and the civilized strongly inspired by the masterpiece of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Medea. Finally, lighting will be worked on by the choreographer and the scenographer. The music It is when, last year, I lived a new strong artistic encounter, with Christian Lutz, that I thought about the collaborations that are already part of my life. I'm really lucky to have met Romeo Castellucci, Victor Roy, Mika Vainio, Myriam Gourfink. They are powerful artistic relations, of rare evidence and complicity, very rare, which make the deep layers of my being vibrate. I have to live them, honor them, invest them, make them grow. In the spring of 2016, I could no longer imagine that the collaboration with Mika Vainio would stop where we left it with Diffraction in 2011. We had to meet again. So I asked him to join me for the musical creation of Speechless Voices in April 2018, which he accepted without hesitation and with joy. Then on April 12, 2017, Mika had an accident that cost him his life. I have no more words. Only a hole in my body. Speechless Voices could then be A Hole In My Body. The premiere will take place on April 13, 2018, the day following the anniversary of his death. The piece will be dedicated to him. But this is not enough. I attended Mika's funeral and there was a very powerful common desire among the people that Mika was gathering, the desire to continue to have him live through his music. A few weeks later, Rikke Lund- green, his partner, tells me that she was diving into all the music Mika left behind: the one ready to be edited, the bulk one, studies ... She tells me that I have to feel free to use Mika's music for my future productions and she thinks it would be great if I did I could never fill the hole in my body but his music can continue to set it in motion. I had withdrawn his name from the distribution with distress, today it is by engaging my whole body and with an intimate appreciation that I re-inscribed his name.

I am in the mountains just as I write these words, to listen to his music. I want to make it go back into the cells of my body, live my relation- ship to it. To compose with it then, make it collective. Speechless Voices is marked by his death, the project includes this death, pays tribute to him.

From this reality, I want to build, produce what I wanted to achieve with him, that is to say, forty mi- nutes of repetitive, tireless, complex dance, built from the movements that have made up the individual universe of each scene from the beginning. For this, I think I have to Mika Vainio appeal today to another composer in order to write a piece made to measure with the material of Mika. Or not. It will depend on what I discover in the inheritance that he left us. Maybe even there will be a piece already carved that can carry this dance of the end.

I always said that Mika gives body to space with his music, sculpting it. With his sounds, he sculpts the void around bodies and movements, he makes it visible, alive. Mika is no longer there, but I will leave space for his music to continue to sculpt bodies and space.

We communicated deeply, strongly, in a common voice, but without words. This body is established to signify "Cindy Van Acker’s dance is as abstract as it is intense. Through a mastered expertise of the rythm, a savant practice of combinatorics and an unprecedented research on movement in unexpected series, she’s bringing her performers to an acute focus on gesture itself. The quality of movement generated by this process unravels an incredible, intense body, which has nothing to do anymore with the body as we see it. She reveals the perceived body, the vital body : the one which, shapeless and shifting constantly, we know from the inside - the living body, which rythms and powers answer neither to the principles of medecine neither to the routines of productivity, nor to the usual representations of emotions, but to a constant drive and a variation made out of forces and recollections, of silence and contradictions. This way, she is able to reach the edge of language and expression : this body doesn’t speak, doesn’t express itself, does not represent, or mime, it is established to signify, as if it were to invent a new alphabet capable of describing life quite differently.Speechless Voices means: thought, human language, in other words the bond to the other, are to come. Dance is then what enables, by a renewed attention to time, space and what the plasticity of the body allows, to reinstate the being in what it is where it is, to restore a close contact, intense and unresolved, to oneself. It is undoubtebly for this reason, that her creations have something meditative and very intense: they are withdrawn from current affairs, progressing in a full time without seeking resolution, and at the same time crossed by a kind of impersonal and imperious force, which is produced in the movement, which could be as much that of the will as of the organic life which keeps moving. For her new creation, the Genevan choreographer multiplies the intense bond between the performer and his body by first referring it to two performers, a pair or a couple, then between the couple and a group, and finally between this small community and the audience. How does everyone today see the relationship to oneself, to the chosen other, to the collective? While these questions are undoubtedly blazing today, Cindy Van Acker, accompanied by her usual scenographer Victor Roy offers less a new solution than she makes of the dance the occasion of a reinvention of what binds humans together, returning to the intensity of the relationship to self, body, space and time."

Eric Vautrin Photos

Speechless Voices Creation April 2018 photo : Louise Roy Biographies

Cindy Van Acker — choregrapher Trained in classical ballet, Cindy Van Acker first danced in the Flanders Royal Ballet in Belgium and at the Geneva’s Grand Theatre before emerging in the contemporary dance scene in Geneva. She creates her own pieces since 1994 and founds the Cie Greffe in 2002 at the occasion of the creation of Corps 00:00 that obtained international recognition. In 2003, Van Acker creates two other solos, Fractie and Balk 00:49.

In 2005 she signs her first group piece for eight dancers, Pneuma 02:05. The same year, the Italian director Romeo Castellucci invites Van Acker to present Corps 00:00 at the Venice Biennale. This first meeting leads to an artistic collaboration with Castellucci who suggestsher to create the choreographic part for his creation of Dante’s Inferno (2008 edition of the Avignon Festival). Under his direction, she also signs the choreographic part of the operas Parsifal, created at De Munt in January 2011, and Moise und Aron, set up at Opéra Bastille in October 2015.

In 2006 she creates Puits at the Théâtre du Galpon in Geneva, a collaboration with Vincent Barras and Jacques Demierre, performed by Perrine Valli. Invited by Michèle Pralong and Maya Boesch during the first year of their co-directorship of the Théâtre du Grü in Geneva, Cindy presents a trio of women, Kernel. Created in 2007, Kernel provides an opportunity for a first and stimulating collaboration with the Finnish composer Mika Vainio of the group. He created and played live the music for the performance. This experience continues in 2008 with Lanx at the Electron Festival and in 2009 for the creation of the solos Nixe and Obtus for the Bâtie-Festival de Genève. Obvie, Antre and Nodal complete this series of six solos and are the source of as many films realized by Orsola Valenti. The choreographer presents four of these solos : Obvie, Lanx, Nixe and Obtus at the Festival d’Avignon in 2010. With Monoloog in 2010, she renewed her collaboration with the Electron Festival and Mika Vainio.

In October 2011 she creates Diffraction, piece for six dancers and a light-machine, 9-tubes designed by Victor Roy. In October 2013 Diffraction receives one of the four Swiss awards of dance in the category « Création actuelle », designated by l’Office Fédéral de la Culture. In January 2012 she conceives with Victor Roy the project Score Conductor, an exhibition and materialisation in visual objects of the choreographic scores that Cindy has written since 2003. At this occasion and on the initiative of Michèle Pralong, a book by the name of Partituurstructuur is edited by Héros-Limite.

In 2013 she creates Magnitude for 22 dancers of the Ballet Junior directed by Sean Wood and Patrice Delay as well as Liniaal for the Cie Virevolte directed by Manon Hotte in Geneva. Then, in the same year, Helder is premiered on la Belle Scène de Saint Denis on the proposition by Myriam Gourfink in the context of her residence at the Forum Blanc-Mesnil. And, last, in November 2013, she signs Drift, a duo performed by Tamara Bacci and herself. In July 2014, Cindy Van Acker created Anechoic during Expeditie Dansand on the beach Ostende for 53 danseurs de P.A.R.T.S. The play is resumed in June 2015 with 40 dancers of the Ballet Junior 13 and CFC-dance in Geneva.

ION, created in March 2015 at Théâtre Vidy Lausanne, marks her return to the solo form, its possibility of radical experiments and the looking for extreme plasticity.

She then created in 2016 Elementen I Room for the Ballet de Lorraine based upon Alvin Lucier’s music and Zaoum, based upon Luigi Nono’s work.

Cindy Van Acker has been responsible for the physical formation at the Haute Ecole de Théâtre, la Manufacture, in Lausanne from 2006 till 2010.

Her professional path is marked by her collaborations with Myriam Gourfink, Romeo Castellucci, Victor Roy and by the collaborators of the Cie Greffe. Mika Vainio — musician and composer Mika Vainio was based in Oslo/Norway, and published solo recordings under his birth name and under a series of pseudonyms including Ø and Philus and, together with Ilpo Väisänen, as Pan Sonic (formerly Panasonic). In the beginning of the 80's Mika Vainio has played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene. Nowadays, his solo works are known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or minimal avant techno, Vainio is always creating unique, physical sounds. He has released on labels like editions , Touch, Wavetrap and Sähkö and has been producing among others with of Suicide, Haino Keji, John Duncan, Stephen O'Malley, and Bruce Gilbert. He has worked with Cindy Van Acker on the following projects : Kernel, Lanx, Nixe, Obtus, Diffraction.

Victor Roy — set designer Victor Roy has worked as theatre technician in Geneva’s Comedy Theatre and other Geneva institutions since 2001. He was an assistant set-designer on Gilles Jobin’s Steack House. Since 2008, he works with the Cie Greffe as technical director and conceives and realizes the set-designs for the creations. In 2009 Roy was general manager of Joël Jouanneau’s Sous l’oeil d’Oedipe in Avignon. He is currently working with La Ribot, the ADC, the Comedy workshop, etc… In 2012 he co-signs with Cindy Van Acker the concept of the exhibitionins- tallation Score Conductor and realizes the light-creation and the set-design for I feel 2 and I feel 3, Marco Berettini. In 2013 he signs two pieces in the exhibition Lumières for the Festi- val Antigel in Geneva and creates the set-design for Drift . Since 2010, he is behind the scenography of every creation by Cindy Van Acker, the last of which were Ion, Elementen I –Room and Zaoum

Marco Giusti — light designer After studying contemporary history for two years in Trieste, Marco Giusti enrolled in the Paolo Grassi theatre school and graduated in 2003 as a director. He has worked as Gabriele Amadori's assistant and trained in lighting design at the Rossini Festival and the Venice Biennale. In 2006 he became the resident lighting designer for different music festivals like the No Boarders Music, the Folkest and the Sexto’nplugged. He has often worked with directors Benedetto Sicca and Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, at the Théâtre du Châtelet and many Italian festivals. He has been involved in opera productions like La Sonnambula, Otello and Carmen as well as remakes like the pop opera Pop’pea. He collaborates regularly with Romeo Castellucci for his opera productions. Current projects: The turn of the screw at the Maggio Musicale, Medea in Corinto at the Val- lée d’Itria Festival and Un ballo in maschera in Piacenza.

Samuel Pajand— sound designer Born in 1977 in Paris. Graduated at the university of Brest in 2000. Sound designer for per- formances of Judith Depaule, Gildas Milin, Joachim Latarjet, Vincent Macaigne.. He's member of the compagnie MELKPROD./Marco Berrettini since 2006 and collaborates regularly with Claudia Triozzi and Marta Izquierdo. He forms Complexité faible, a music duo with Fred Costa, Silvergold with Marie-Caroline Hominal and Summer Music with Marco Berrettini.He meets Cindy Van Acker in 2014 and signs the sound-track for her creation Ion in 2015. He founds in 2017 the Cie Trans with Victor Roy, together they sign Phare, live sound- installation presented at the Big Festival in Geneva and at the Festival de la Cité in Lausanne.

Stéphanie Bayle — dancer After her three-year course at the Junior Ballet of Geneva, Stephanie Bayle was first recruited by the company Alias with which she worked until 2012 on several creations, as a substitute and on many international tours. In Geneva, she was the interpreter of the 7273 company for the creation of Nile and recently, she joined the cast of Quantum a piece choreo- graphed by Gilles Jobin. Stephanie is also currently working with choreographer from Basel Tabea Martin and performs in her latest production, Field. In 2014, Stephanie meets the Swiss visual artist Sylvie Fleury and takes part in the exhibi- tion-performance Camino Del Sol at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Pantin. Since August 2012, Stephanie works with choreographer Cindy Van Acker in her company, Greffe, which she joined as a substitute for the performance Diffraction. Cindy Van Acker creates for her the solo Helder in 2013 for the Off Festival in Avignon. In the same year, Stephanie assists the choreographer for LINIAAL, a creation for the young company Virevolte by Manon Hotte, then for Anechoic, created in Ostend Belgium, for the 50 dancers of the school PARTS. Recently, Stephanie has been assisting Cindy Van Acker for the choreography of the opera Moses and Aron, directed by Romeo Castellucci, created at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in October 2015. Also with Cie Greffe, Stephanie is coordinating the organization of daily classes and occa- sional workshops with guest artists, as part of the project for the training of professional dancer that the company has implemented in its studios.

Matthieu Chayrigues — dancer Born in 1993 in Grenoble, Matthieu Chayrigues started his formation at the Conservatory of Grenoble, pursuing at the National Superior School of Dance in Marseille before obtaining a Bachelor of Arts at the Palucca Hochschule für Tanz à Dresde. After an internship in 2013 at the CCN de Rillieux-la-Pape, he got engaged at the CCN-Ballet de Lorraine for four seasons. There he develops his skills, dancing a variable repertory; pieces of Wiliam Forsythe, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Twyla Tharp, Alban Richard, Andonis Foniadakis and Cindy Van Acker who he will join for Speechless Voices.

Laure Lescoffy — dancer Laure Lescoffy started dancing at the age of 10. Her career path led her to the CNR in Paris, then to the one in Montreuil to then arrive at the Ballet Junior in Geneva in 2006. There she had the chance to work with several choreographers amongst them Stjin Celis, Gilles Jobin, Lucinda Childs. In 2007, she joins the pre-professional company at the Ballet de Lorraine, and is then hired by the company during the same season. For ten years, she's experiencing a large repertory within the company, allowing her to work on performances by Maguy Marin, Trisha Brown, William Forsythe. She also met many choreographers during crea- tions such as Emmanuel Gat, Alban Richard, Maria La Ribot, Mathilde Monnier, Faustin Linyekula, Gisèle Vienne, Marcos Morau, Andonis Foniadakis and Cindy Van Acker.

Raphaëlle Teicher — dancer She began dancing in Belgium at the Humanités Chorégraphiques. In 2003, she arrived in Geneva to continue her training at the Junior Ballet until 2006. She is now a freelance dancer for several choreographers : Noemi Lapsezon, Foofwa d’Imobilité, Quivala Cie., Cindy Van Acker in Geneva, Marie-Laure Agrapart in Strasbourg and Tanztheater3 in Bern. Meanwhile, she creates pieces in collaboration with other dancers (Theatre Factory, Factory premises Festival, Contretemps.). In 2010, she created the company RA de MA ré with Marthe Krummenacher ; they create a first duo RA de MA ré at the Théâtre de l'Usine in Geneva and a second Poussez les Bords du Monde in 2012

Rudi van der Merwe — dancer & choreographer Rudi van der Merwe studied theater and French litterature at the University of Stellenbosch while pursuing a free-lance activity in the fields of theater, television and dance. In 1999 he began a dance training with the company Heel Arts Collective in Cape Town before leaving for France. He accomplished modern literature, film and dance studies at the University of Strasbourg and participated in ex.e.r.ce at the CCN Montpellier directed by Mathilde Mon- nier in 2002. Since 2004 he worked as an interpreter with Cindy van Acker, Gilles Jobin, Yan Duyvendak and collaborates with Ayelen Parolin, Jòzsef Trefeli and Marie-Caroline Hominal. Since 2010 he is active as a choreographer and created Miss En Abyme, Celestial Spunk and Wolf Trophy with Skree Wolf company. www.rudivandermerwe.com Daniela Zaghini — dancer Born in Italy in 1990, Daniela began dancing at the age of eight. After a short period at the school of La Scala and Teatro Carcano in Milan, she completed her training at the Rudra Béjart school where she had the possibility of being followed by the master Maurice Béjart (2006- 2008). During these two years of training she participated in several performances and tours of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne. In 2008 she enters the company of the Ballet du Rhin in France. She dances for two years a classic and contemporary repertoire, including choreographies by Jiri Kilian, Alexander Ekman, Johan Inger and Lucinda Childs. In 2010, she returned to Switzerland and incorporated the company of the Grand Théâtre in Geneva (under the direction of Philippe Cohen). During the five years with the company, she toured different countries of the world with a varied repertoire. She danced in particular the performances of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Mats Ek, Emanuel Gat, Joëlle Bouvier and Andonis Foniadakis. In 2015, she decided to start a free lance career. She dances Tool for Inkörper dance company under the direction of Aurélien Dougé, as part of the fête de la Musique and Antigel festival in Geneva. Today she works with two companies in particular : Cie Greffe Cindy Van Acker and Ema- nuel Gat Dance.