Freeze/Défreeze

(2000)

Baroque, critical, verging on the burlesque, Marco Berrettini's way of working surprises and even bothers audiences, disrupting the horizon of their expectations while never losing sight of the real. He likes to use the term PCSC (which stands for commercial spectacular cultural product) to describe his works, as a reminder that while art is a serious business, it's not necessarily solemn. The power of laughter that Berrettini weaves into each of his works puts our present world under pressure, between irony and the absurd.  From theatre to performance, Marco Berrettini always leaves room for improvisation and he knows how to surround himself with astonishing performers. Freeze/Défreeze, a duet written in collaboration with two dancers. This duet has a minimalist aesthetic that contrasts with the rest of his work, but it is still faithful to the concept of 'character'. In fact, words have a limited role in this duet, probably because the source of inspiration for this work is a man with throat cancer: Malboro Man, with an unresolved lawsuit against the company that employed him over more than thirty long years and is responsible for his misfortune. Advertising clichés (a Western, soft-porn ambience) shape the bodies and gangrene the dance, which becomes laboured and is constantly broken, Freeze, demystified and reinvigorated. Techno ambience warmed by the heat of a chimney.

Choreography: Marco Berrettini, Valérie Brau-Antony and Chiara Gallerani
Performance: Valérie Brau-Antony and Chiara Gallerani
Music: Manuel Coursin and Michel Guillet
Lights: Bruno Faucher
Video: *Melk Prod.
Costumes: *Melk Prod.
Created in Lausanne, Théâtre de l'Arsenic, Festival Les Urbaines, in December 2000.