In the framework of the “Acoustic Picnics”
My idea for the in-situ creation is to land our anonymous guy in Dudelange, in the Italian neighbourhood. The place, the inhabitants and their stories are the main driving force behind the research and creation of this twenty-minute performance. The chosen place will be precise because the geographical delimitation of this place will be important in the creation, especially in the truthful passage when our guy will have crossed this border to enter this place.
Although this does not mean that he is the main actor in the play, he is nevertheless the trigger for a certain conflict.
Indeed, the inspiration for this creation is drawn from the educational standards of the Mediterranean population. Politeness, warmth, warm hospitality, but also what people will say, the secrets within the home, the importance of family etc.
The creation thus really plays with the origin of the name “Quartier Italie”. Without wanting to reproduce societal norms in a simplistic way, I would like to draw the symbolic inspiration for the choreographic movements and the living tableaux from them. Indeed, after a long journey, our guy lands in the Italian neighbourhood. It is a place where all the codes of a society are established and if they had to establish themselves through hardship at the time, then the population will tend to reproduce this hardship with the next newcomer, almost as if to push him away. Because this strange stranger disturbs the good (and bad) old habits. Yet over the course of the 20 minutes, he will perhaps manage to bring out the old hospitality in these inhabitants, what one should do out of politeness but above all what it should be normal to do: open one’s door to the stranger in a place where we ourselves have been strange strangers.
The three places chosen will represent, among other things, the evolution of the region. A place where human activity, once omnipresent, has left a trace on which nature has reclaimed its rights (e.g. the Haard nature reserve, etc.), a place where infrastructures have remained frozen in time as a place of memory or awaiting a transition (e.g. Arbed warehouses, Fond-de-gras, Maison Rosati, etc.) and finally a place where the transition has already taken place (e.g. Belval, etc.)
These places are all directly linked to the industrial past of the region, which will serve as a common thread between the short film and the three performances.
In our case, the expression through movement will allow us to transmit an artistic vision that is sufficiently abstract to favour the freedom of interpretation of each person in these places full of history.
A certain nostalgia for the past but also the hope of a future already full of new opportunities will appear in our stagings.
Project leader: LUCODA (Luxembourg Collective of Dance)
Artists: Piera Jovic, George Maikel Pirez Monteiro, u.a.
