Le Maillot – One Size Fits All

In Le Maillot – One Size Fits All, a group of performers with diverse artistic practices – ranging from dance to photography, fashion, video and athletics and all sharing football as a common passion – come together to explore the football jersey and its infinite cultural and physical significance. Departing from the simple action of shirt pulling, common in football as a method of maintaining contact with an opponent, not letting an opponent get away and typically seen as an aggressive act, they attempt to push this action to its limits, debunking its aggressive, competitive quality to arrive at something new. 

In doing so the jerseys begin to take on a new significance. The histories and cultural implications of every piece of material transcend the initial association of simply being a football jersey. They are countries, they are clubs, they are cities, villages, sponsors, oil companies, memories and fashion; the players, their models and providers of haute couture. But who can provide haute couture?

This production started with a meeting between Ahilan Ratnamohan, Sergio Belo Fanck, Alimu Mahammad, Lia Conceiçao and Issouf Ilboudo. While they came together to explore football movements, the thing which stood out most was a shared interest in fashion or design from completely different perspectives. Ahilan invited former collaborators and footballers Mahy Nambiar and Oumar Diallo.

• Globe Aroma is an artistic working and meeting place where space, time and a network are offered to people with a newcomer background. In recent years, they have set up several co-creative performance projects – including in co-production with Kaaitheater – and invited a different artist each time. In 2020 that was theatre maker/performer/choreographer Ahilan Ratnamohan. In September 2020, Ahilan and a group of performers started the rehearsal process but soon had to stop because of corona. This autumn, they will resume rehearsals. The thin line between process and (final) product is typical of these co-creation projects. Globe Aroma ensures that everyone can move along to the rhythm of the group and the project.