Human beings, masters of the world? Laura Scozzi is somewhat doubtful. What if animals had their say? So, she re-wrote the story. Along the way, she asked herself other questions: what would happen if Sleeping Beauty did not wake up; if Cinderella had not found her glass slipper; if Snow White were black?  So, she started to imagine, leading her to rock the boat that is so damaging to young girls. Never-ending love, blonde princesses with blue eyes whose entire life is spent waiting for Prince Charming? Stuff and nonsense! She therefore invented a plan B: another world. There, we come across a bee killing a bear, a fairy with a malfunctioning magic wand, a dwarf being harassed by seven nymphomaniac Snow Whites. Coached by the Italian choreographer, spurred on by the trills of the great Paganini, our little good heroes deliver themselves up to a killing game, from which our childhood tales emerge groggily. A subversive, exhilarating fable somewhere between dance, mime and theatre, served up by eight hip-hop dancers.

Note of intention

“I wanted to assassinate the ‘imposed’ blueprint of romantic encounters, the worshipping of beauty, the moralising good that offers up examples of obsolete Catholic virtues and, above all, the supreme myth of the Prince Charming in every fairytale destined for young girls. I wanted to take a critical view of the childlike dreams influenced by love stories with happy endings, white horses, strong and muscular handsome princes and beautiful, thin, fragile princesses, preferably blonde with blue eyes. All these influences have, in my mind, led generations of women to identity issues, to the inexorable and interminable wait for a day that will never come, to the confrontation of the impossibility of this dream and, finally, the difficult acceptance of compromise in the face of daily life. This is a difficulty which for decades has fuelled psychoanalysts and the manufacturers of anxiolytics and/or neuroleptics. I wanted to take a contrasting look at the perfect love story and show princes and princesses who are unable to be happy, swept along by the unforeseeable and uncontrollable external factors of life. This is bound to create victims of setbacks, mood swings, the desire to commit malicious acts, lewd thoughts, impatience and powerlessness. I wanted to subvert the myths, dissect the characters, distort the key actions, and massacre the imagery of Walt Disney mass culture. Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Tinkerbell, Snow White: all these folk tale leading ladies have, at some point, been engulfed by the media-crazed world, transforming them into commodities. As icons of the society of consumption, hostages of their own effigy, how can they become emancipated from the representations that have been assigned to them? How can they exist in another way when decked out in such an identifiable costume?  I wanted to probe other possibilities, other navigable routes. I had to manipulate rules, subvert references and stir up clichés. Like an ethnologist, I had to set about meticulously observing the stereotypes of representation in order to then begin deconstructing them. Through accumulation, repetition or inversion, the characters would cease to be the masters of their own destiny, their actions no longer part of this mass imagery. Thus liberated from the shackles of the clichés that they currently personify, the characters of folk tales can now have free rein of other spaces, taking over the stage and inviting us to consume the very ‘consumed’ story of our ‘fabulous’ culture...”

Credits

Conception and staging : Laura Scozzi
Choregraphy : Laura Scozzi 
With : Dorel Brouzeng Lacoustille, John Degois, François Lamargot, Céline Lefèvre, Sandrine Monar, Karla Pollux, Mélanie Sulmona, Jean-Charles Zambo
Artistical collaboration : Olivier Sferlazza
Music : Niccolò Paganini
Lights : Ludovic Bouaud
Costumes : Olivier Bériot
With the support of : Jérémie Hasael Massieux, Gwenaëlle Le Dantec, Sonia de Sousa, Louise Wats
Scenography : Natacha Le Guen de Kerneizon
Lights manager : Jean-Raphaël Schmitt
Set manager : Sonia Virly
Coach : Corinne Barbara
Tour manager : Mathieu Morelle
Order et production : Théâtre de Suresnes Jean Vilar 
Coproduction : Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Theater im Pfalzbau - Ludwigshafen

Réalisation vidéo : Fabien Plasson
Production : Maison de la Danse - 2014

Born in 1964, Laura Scozzi took her first dance classes at the  age of 6 and then explored all body techniques, from classical to  contemporary, including jazz, tap and ballroom dance. She attended the  Accademia d'Arte Drammatica in Rome and then the École de Mimodrame  Marcel Marceau in Paris. At the same time, she graduated in sociology  and explored photography. In 1994, she founded the company Opinioni in  Movimento, or which she has choreographed and directed several shows  combining dance, acting and singing. 

As a guest choreographer, she created La Dolce Vita for the Grand Théâtre de Genève’s ballet, The Seven Deadly Sins for the Paris Opera Ballet and Mes relations avec les hommes n'ont jamais été très claires for the Junior Ballet de Cannes. In 1999, she tackled hip-hop dance with Étant donné la conjoncture actuelle, continued with the musical À chacun son serpent, then Sol à sol avec poids, Quelque part par là and Barbe Neige et les 7 petits cochons au bois dormant.  On the opera, theatre and film productions, she has choreographed for  Jean-Louis Grinda, Emmanuelle Bastet, Coline Serreau, Sébastien  Lifshitz, Jean-Michel Ribes and Laurent Pelly. 

For the theatre, she directed Et puis j'm'en fous, vas-y, prends-la ma bagnole by Olivier Sferlazza at the Scène nationale d'Angoulême, followed by the musical play La vie secrète de Marioline Serin and À propos de l'homme singe at La Filature in Mulhouse. 

In 2008, Laura Scozzi directed her first opera, Benvenuto Cellini, at the Staatstheater Nürnberg, followed by The Magic Flute (Nuremberg, Bordeaux), Il viaggio a Reims (Nuremberg), nominated for ‘Der Faust’ in the best opera direction category, Orpheus in the Underworld (Bern, Bordeaux and Nuremberg), Les Indes galantes (Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nuremberg), L’Italiana in Algeri (Toulouse, Nuremberg), Akhenaton (Bonn) and in 2019 a new production of Il viaggio a Reims (Semperoper Dresden).

Source: Opéra de Paris