At the still point of the turning world

Renaud Herbin’s performance

“At the crossroads of puppetry and dance, Renaud Herbin's creation takes as its title a line by T.S. Eliot taken from Quatre quartuors. To the point of tranquility of the whirling world is born from his meeting with the dancer and choreographer Julie Nioche around the suspended body. With singer and songwriter Sir Alice and puppeteer Aïtor Sanz Juanes, they form a quartet at the edge of a crowd of 12-inch long puppets, stored in their bags. A suspended landscape, a compact and motionless community of beings waiting for a future that they do not master. The director and puppeteer dreamed of this undulating mass like a wave, which envelops the performers as one and the same body. An exploration of the limits of the possible of the string puppet leaving room for the revelation of the energy flows and invisible secret links - and yet physical - linking all these elements. A game where the roles overlap and reverse. Where the principles of manipulation are understood as areas of interaction. Where ladders collide: the crowd of miniature beings becomes a giant organism when manipulated with a single swing, while a three-foot puppet stands up to the performers. Sir Alice's vocal and musical work nourishes and amplifies this mismatch of scales. The physical sounds of the stage (rubbing, crackling…) sit side by side with a zither. The material serves as a junction point between the body of the dancer and that of the puppeteer, driven by motivations so deep that we do not know which of the body or the material follows or extends the other. Who is the ghost or its imprint.”

I wanted to make the installation resonate like a giant string instrument, so I choose a multiple string instrument, a cithare and start to compose music and singing improvising, carried by the structure motion and its relation with the dancer.

Staging : Renaud Herbin
Puppetry : Renaud Herbin and Aito Sanz Juanes
Choreography : Julie Nioche
Music : Sir Alice
Light : Fany

Production : TJP – Centre Dramatique National Strasbourg - GranD EST
Co-Production : Théâtre de marionnette de Ljubljana
Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, Théâtre de Sartrouville et des Yvelines - Centre dramatique national