"Bless the Sound that Saved a Witch like me"
I want to share a scream with you.
I want to share a sound without fences.
I want to share this loudness and the silence that comes within.
I want to offer you a journey without directions, a journey into the unknown.
I want to offer you no certainty or no set conclusion.
I wanna share a breath, for I exist - for we exist.
Like the swallow that flew to our ancestors to a chain of time, that is the only gesture lost in time and space.
Whether filled with rage, pleasure, pain or silence, screaming is a powerful and profoundly intimate act. It provokes instant empathy that also summons up our most common and instinctive emotions. It opens a crack in space and time.
Together with performer Sati Veyrunes and composer Lucia Ross, Benjamin Kahn examines the means of expression connected to the feeling of emergency. Screaming is less well documented in the history of philosophy and the social sciences. It is mostly equated with anger, hysteria or chaos and is often silenced.
This solo is an attempt to reappropriate the scream in order to articulate and tame this raw and staggering material. The journey is physical, sonic and aims at making this vital impulse accessible to all, once again.
"Bless the Sound that Saved a Witch like me" is the second part of a trilogy of portraits, composed by "Sorry, But I Feel Slightly Dissidentified...", a solo for Cherish Menzo and the solo The Blue Hour for Théo Acremanne (2023).
• Benjamin Kahn is a dancer and choreographer. He studied dramaturgy and theatre at the University of Aix en Provence and the Conservatoire de Rennes, and is a graduate of ESAC (École Supérieure des Arts du Cirque) in Belgium. Since graduating, he has worked with choreographers such as Philippe Saire, Benjamin Vandewalle, Nicole Beutler, Ben J. Riepe, Frédéric Flamand, Maud Le Pladec, Eglė Budvytytė and Alessandro Sciarroni.
concept and choreography Benjamin Kahn⎜creation and performance Sati Veyrunes⎜music Lucia Ross⎜light and direction Neils Doucet ⎜dramaturgy assistant Théo Aucremanne⎜outside view Cherish Menzo⎜costumes Carolin Herzberg⎜sound countrol Louis Daurat ⎜light control Edouard Bonnet ⎜text Benjamin Kahn directly inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Death Grips, Darek Jerman, MAVI⎜executive production Les Halles de Schaerbeek⎜administration and production Léonard Degoulet⎜distribution and development Sandrine Barrasso⎜coproduced by Klap Maison pour la danse, Charleroi Danse, Les Halles de Schaerbeek⎜hosted by Festival de Marseille, Centre National de la danse Pantin, Klap Maison pour la danse, Kaaitheater, BUDA Kunstencentrum, Rotterdam Theater ⎜executive production Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Actoral Marseille
This performance contains strobe lights, loud music and nudity.
