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 Milan in 1964, Laura Scozzi found her path in weaving together the miscellaneous. She established her own company Opinioni in Movimento in 1994, and chose to mix dance, singing and theatre together. She went on to carry out research work on emotions, entitled F.E.I.R. - Facteur Extérieur Cherche Individu en vue de Résultat (External Factor Seeking an Individual to Achieve a Result), the series began in 1995 with L’Amour (Love). She continued her route with La Peur (Fear) in 1998, La Colère (Anger) in 2002 and Le Désir, Le Dégoût (Desire, Disgust) in 2004. 

At the same time as running her company, she developed her career as an independent choreographer and created several works with hip-hop dancers for the Suresnes Cités Danse Festival. She revisited La Dolce Vita in 2001 and orchestrated Brecht/Weill’s ballet-opera Les Sept Péchés Capitaux (The Seven Deadly Sins) also in 2001. Laura Scozzi has also worked hand-in-hand with a myriad of other creators, and has imagined choreographies for operatic performances, for the theatre and the cinema: Coline Serreau, Laurent Pelly, Jean-Louis Grinda, Emmanuelle Bastet, Matthieu Poirot-Delpech and Sébastien Lifschitz. In 2008, she created her first opera production with Benvenuto Cellini by Hector Berlioz. After this, she produced Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (2009-2010). In 2014, she created Barbe-Neige et les sept petits cochons au Bois dormant with eight hip-hop dancers.

Source : Théâtre du Rond Point