Les assistantes

Works by the American choreographer Jennifer Lacey previously shown at the Kaaitheater include $ Shot (2001) and mhmmmm (2005). The French artist Nadia Lauro worked on both these productions (last season she built the ‘mental rock-garden’ Tu montes? I hear voices in our foyer).

Their new production, Les assistantes, has modest beginnings: a simple curiosity about the shared space between the soloist and the group, the individual absorbed by the group, the voice by the chorus, and vice versa: the group sucked into the individual.

Lacey seeks her inspiration in historical ‘utopian’ experiments with communes and suchlike. Charles Fourier (the founder of the ‘phalanstères’), Anne Lee (of the Shakers), the Marquis de Sade, Roland Barthes and others are astonished to find themselves sitting together around the same campfire. They sing and dance together, knowing that the time-span of a performance is brief but perhaps ideal for a utopia.

Les assistantes is based on the simple question underlying all others: ‘How does one want to spend one’s time?’

Nadia Lauro’s stage setting is a continuation of her previous work; her aim is to create an ‘energetic space’, an ‘Experimental House for Emotions’. The score is by Jonathan Bepler, who has also worked on past Lacey productions.