Brûler

This planet is on fire. If Lucy, the 3,2 million-year-old Australopithecus discovered in the Ethiopian desert, were to return today, what would she say? 

As the audience roams freely through a space transformed into an excavation site, a voice emerges, that of American soprano Claron McFadden, who conjures up Lucy and the fiction surrounding this ancestral figure: who would she be if she returned today, and how would she view the world we live in? Words, songs, gestures and movements, video footage, visual creations, sounds and music unfurl in a sensory constellation to create a vast metaphorical body. At stake: a history of humanity caught off guard by its own existence, torn between the awareness of its inevitable demise and the transhumanist desire to extend life indefinitely.

Going back in time, superimposing and extending timelines. Summoning the past to question the present. Lighting the flame of a future that is searching for itself in a world whose end is constantly being predicted. This is the intention that drives the team of artists brought together by Jorge León, in a complex and invigorating collage of related artistic disciplines. Claron McFadden, Simone Aughterlony, Rokia Bamba and Caroline Lamarche work with the Brussels director and film-maker to articulate a dramaturgy of the fragmentary within a practice of the present moment.
 

Credits

• Creation | Direction • Jorge León
• In close collaboration with the performers • Claron McFadden / Simone Aughterlony / Rokia Bamba / Castélie Yalombo
• In close collaboration with the graduates of the Master Dance and choreographic practices - INSAS, the ENSAV - La Cambre and Charleroi Danse • Aimé Gaster / Vio Lacroix / Garance Maillot / Charly Molle-Cousin / Justine Richard / Caroline Roche / Lou Viallon / Loü Viret
• Assistance | Dramaturgy • Isabelle Dumont
• Texts • Caroline Lamarche / Elsa Dorlin / Laurence Vielle
• Scenography • Traumnovelle
• Sound installation | Music composition • Rokia Bamba
• Light design • Arnaud Eubelen
• Video design • Aliocha Van der Avoort
• Costume design • Eugénie Poste / Julie Menuge
• Decor construction | Costume making • Ateliers du Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles
• Visual artist • Arnaud Vasseux
• Molds | Moldings • Stéphanie Denoiseux