Opium

“‘The people’ as unity, identity, totality or generality simply doesn’t exist… because in the end there are only coexisting peoples.”
(George Didi-Huberman “What is a people?”)

Fundamental and empty of meaning, this people imposed itself on us as a vain yet always sought-after unity.We are choreographers, and for this project we brought together a team with different practices, because the subject calls for several entries. Opium is conceived as a geography of the desert (cf Hannah Arendt “What is politics?”) and this desert is not sterile, it produces forms, words.We therefore chose accumulation* as a figure of speech.This sensation is the driving force behindOpium. Associated with the Théâtre de Nîmes over the 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 seasons, we were then able to articulate this project in different stages.

*Accumulation: Materials of the same nature, of the same parentage, juxtaposed without any other link. Accumulation conveys an impression of disorder, chaos and overflow (it doesn’t allow for any progression or construction of meaning).

A photographic and journalistic approach
First stage with reporter Julien Cernobori and photographers Anya Tikhomirova and Soraya Hocine, based on Hannah Arendt’s notions of Oasis and Desert.

“(…) The increasing loss of the world, the disappearance of the in-between.
This is the extension of the desert, and the desert is the world in whose conditions we move (…).
The danger is that we become true inhabitants of the desert and feel at home in it.”
What is politics? Hannah Arendt

Thechallenge was to produce a primer of material (interviews and photos), a snapshot of these worlds, always halfway between aridity and strange remission.
We went to meet different worlds and different bodies: La Pension de famille Lumière et Vie (Nîmes), Quartier Libre (Nîmes), Collège Condorcet (Nîmes), Centre Français de Tauromachie (Nîmes), Légion Etrangère (Aubagne), Centre Hospitalier François Tosquelles (Saint Alban sur Limagnole), but also the plateaux of Lozère, Paris, Rouen etc...

Essays, provisional writings, exhibitions
It was from these interviews and visuals that the writing developed, transposed. Essays, provisional writings create intuitive links between these different materials and different contexts

The piece
Think of the group as a fragment, a fraction, an accumulation.We wanted the construction of this piece like a mobile. Each element of a mobile seems dissociated. The whole is articulated and only appears when these elements intersect before our eyes.
A dance, a song, a story, elements that remain dissociated like an accumulation* of behaviors, all held together by this strange consciousness between joyful casualness and legitimate violence.

The place of music
Music plays a major role in our approach. In Opium, it puts two sides of the same coin into perspective: the corrosive power of Nina Simone’s revisited pieces find their rightful place against Hannah Arendt’s banality of the worst.
An ever-expanding sounding board,it projects figures who, between threat and resignation, search for their paradigm.An imperfect balance is at work. Opium is a never-ending march, a hazy, constant smoke.

Crédits
Choreography: Magali Milian and Romuald Luydlin
With the collaboration of : Laurent Benard, Benjamin Chaval, Sophie Lequenne, Valérie Leroux, Romuald Luydlin, Corine Milian, Magali Milian, Manusound, Lucie Patarozzi, Denis Rateau, Marc Sens, Anna Vanneau

Production
Producers : La Zampa
Coproduction : Théâtre de Nîmes scène conventionnée pour la danse contemporaine, CDC Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, Scènes Croisées Scène conventionnée de Lozère, Théâtre de L’Archipel Scène nationale de Perpignan, CCNO Orléans Josef Nadj and ICI-CCN Montpellier Occitanie/Pyrénées Méditerranée directed by Christian Rizzo as part of the Accueil-studio program.
In residence: Le Toboggan-Décines, Fabrik-Potsdam, Collège Condorcet-Nîmes, Le ZO-Nîmes, Centre hospitalier François Tosquelles-Saint Alban, L’Odéon-Théâtre de Nîmes.
With support from: Adami, société des artistes-interprètes and Institut Français (Bureau du Théâtre et de la Danse – Berlin).
La Zampa is subsidized by the Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée, by the Région Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée and by the Département du Gard.