Gisèle Vienne

Gisèle Vienne, stage artist for emotional abysses and ecstatic states, shows in her biggest scenic overpowering to date an emotional tramping party crowd.

Gisèle Vienne, a stage artist exploring mental chasms and ecstatic conditions, showcases an emotionally chaotic party crowd in her biggest piece of overpowering performance thus far. Fifteen youthful-looking nighttime dancers perform, in slow motion, to a playlist by musician Peter Rehberg with classics from the rave scene and its electronic forerunners, like Manuel Göttsching. And the music sets the scene for an emotional state of emergency: The party guests’ movements are masterfully slowed down and stylized, allowing the dancers’ quasi-religious ecstasy to be dissected and a palette of complex feelings to expand before viewers’ eyes and ears. Moments of love and violence, intimacy and aversion emerge amid the collective frenzy, and viewer perception shifts with the rhythm of the music and bodies. In CROWD, emotions are literally laid bare and they tell stories written behind the images as a subtext by author Dennis Cooper. In this way, French choreographer Gisèle Vienne continues a theatrical journey that produced disturbingly exhilarating moments in earlier editions of the International Summer Festival.

CROWD production leaflet (PDF download)