Mathilde Monnier has an adventurous spirit. She likes unexpected encounters and, for over a dozen years, since she was appointed head of the Centre Chorégraphique National of Montpellier, Languedoc-Roussillon in 1994, she has had many of them. She has worked with personalities from diverse artistic fields: the plastic artist Beverly Semmes (Nuit [Night], in 1995), the composer David Moss (L'Atelier en pièces [The Workshop in Pieces], in 1996), the author Christine Angot on two occasions (Arrêtez, arrêtons, arrête, [Stop, Let's Stop, stop] in 1997, then the duo La Place du singe [The Monkey's Place] in 2005), the musician Heiner Goebbels (Les Lieux de là [Places from There], in 1999), the film-maker Claire Denis (for the film Vers Mathilde), and the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, with whom she directed “danced lectures” (Allitérations, in 2002). Armed with these experiences, she could come up to the expectations of Philippe Katerine, whom she met in 2005 and who “asked for and proposed her services”. The project was to create a show using demos of songs from an album being produced, Robots après tout (Robot After All). At the Festival d'Avignon, Mathilde Monnier presented Pudique acide / Extasis in 1986, Ainsi de suite (And so Forth) in 1992, L'Atelier en pièces (The Workshop in Pieces) in 1996, Les lieux de là in 1999, La Place du singe and frère&soeur (Brother&Sister) in the Cour d'honneur of the Popes' Palace in 2005.
Philippe Katerine is famous as an ultra-pop singer, a dandy in tight pink or yellow T-shirts, the author of albums such as L'Éducation anglaise (The English Education, 1994), Mes mauvaises fréquentations (My Bad Company, 1996), Les Créatures (The Creatures), and 8e ciel (8th Heaven, 2002). He has also worked outside his natural milieu, especially with film-makers, like the Larrieu brothers (Un homme, un vrai [A Man, a Real One]), Thierry Jousse (Nom de code [Code Name] : Sacha) and the actress Anna Karina (Une histoire d'amour [A Love story] in 1999) and he has also filmed his selfmocking diary, Peau de cochon (Pigskin, 2003). He recently published Doublez votre mémoire (Double Your Memory), a graphic journal (2007).
Songs are sung, but it is not simply a concert; there are dances but they don't look like a choreographic number; stories are told but this isn't cinema. 2008 Valley is first of all a daydream born 30 years ago, in 1978, when Philippe Katerine was a small boy, a form of science fiction near and far that let him imagine sounds, words, extrapolations from concrete events and very real situations of his future life. The valley now exists thanks to his meeting with Mathilde Moonier and takes on the colour of a yellow carpet that gradually thickens, and becomes a form that is both worrying and maternal. Here, Katerine is surrounded by five interpreters, each with his own stand microphone, who move with him, against him, sing, dance, repeat as a chorus or an echo, create confusion on the stage, sometimes get into a fight before calming down, like good little boys. A shadow, loyal and protective, follows Philippe Katerine in his gestures, his movements, his dancer's flights as well as his hesitations, played by Mathilde Monnier, who becomes the singer's alter ego here. The seven “bodies-and-voices” on the stage tell a story, or rather stories, mixing music with dance, words with a staging as playful as it is panicky. It is sometimes brilliant, with repetitions, revivals, movements, shifts from one body to another, one voice to another, one story to another, one side of the stage to the other. It is sometimes primal, because the anxiety and hypochondria of the central character, who fastens on what comes back to him of his childhood, his life, his feelings of malaise and dispossession, hypnotize all the dancersingers, as if in a trance. The adventure is collective: clothes are changed (black, yellow, pink, from the leotard to the culottes…) and roles exchanged: the dancers like to sing and the singer starts to dance, each one encroaching on the other's register with joyful appetite, while the show ventures onto a permanent tightrope, constantly threatening to break. This is how Philippe Katerine and Mathilde Monnier recount their adventures, between dances and songs, minor but real events and fantasy scenes.
Distribution
spectacle de et avec: Philippe Katerine et Mathilde Monnier
avec: Julia Cima, Julien Gallée-Ferré, I-Fang Lin, Éric Martin, Maud Le Pladec
musique: Philippe Katerine
assistant à la chorégraphie: Herman Diephuis
scénographie: Annie Tolleter
lumière: Éric Wurtz
son: Olivier Renouf
costumes: Dominique Fabrègue
Production
coproduction: Arcadi – Action régionale pour la création artistique et la diffusion
en Île-de-France/en co-réalisation de la résidence à la Ferme du Buisson –
Scène nationale de Marne-la-Vallée, Les Spectacles Vivants - Centre Pompidou,
Festival Montpellier Danse 2006, Barclay, Olympic tour, Centre chorégraphique
national de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon
avec le soutien de: l'Adami