With a minimalist approach, a microphone stand directed at a woman’s gut, Holy Guts digests archetypal figures of violence and resistance. To the rhythm of an electrifying pulse, the gestural discourse accumulates to summon a multitude of haunted bodies. In a continuous movement, the vibratory mechanics of sound and body release forces under tension in a process of collective healing.
CREDITS
Artistic direction, choreography and performance: Lyllie Rouvière
Lighting design: Thomas Laigle
Music: Editing: Lyllie Rouvière | Music: Cancellled-WTC-III
Costume: Anastasios Kelpis
VENUES
Art quarter, Budapest (HU) | La Loutre par les Cornes, La Villedieu (23) (FR) | Paris Comité des Caves, Paris (FR) | Le Lac, Bruxelles (BE) | KuLe, Kunst und Leben, Berlin(DE) | Fortuna, Berlin (DE)
REVIEWS
“ We’ve all experienced it: certain gestures betray our emotions, because words aren’t enough to express them. Like an entomologist, Lyllie Rouvière catches in her butterfly net the little things that mean everything and haunt her latest performance. The choreographer who left architecture for dance takes us on an inner journey where the psyche gives up its guts. To achieve this feat, Lyllie doesn’t use a microscope, but a more formidable tool: her body. Bathed in a hypnotic light and soundtrack, she performs a duet with a microphone stand. Unluckily, the tripod causes her to slide into the abyss of an evening gone wrong. In this vortex, Lyllie’s body and thoughts struggle between a resisting, abusive and healing power. As we head deeper into the night, one by one the interior locks pop. The magma that shakes her guts spills out onto the stage, chilling with fright and sincerity. Some bad trips are worth seeing, and « Holy Guts » is one of them.”
Text: David Combes co-editor in chief @sparkstories.fr , previously at Tracks – Arte channel
“…There’s a struggle, a compulsion, even a fight, but it’s all done gracefully. The story refers to the experience of violence, grief and anger, and the audience witnesses the slow healing process, with the dancer « working through it », but not through obsessive thoughts, not by vocalizing harm, but through the flesh itself. Lyllie Rouvière as a dancer pays particular attention to the burden carried inside the tissues, making her body heavy, charged with emotions. It’s now commonplace to say that even the memories of previous generations are encoded in our DNA, that a subcutaneous flow of memories and feelings runs through our veins…
Text: Zorka Wollny, visual artist, http://www.zorkawollny.net/
“…We can barely hear the murmurs of the basement, or rather the sounds of internal digestion. The acoustics are reminiscent of a cavity resonating w ith electronic pulsations.Lyllie Rouvière engages in continuous movement, using archetypal signs as her repertoire. The choreography combines a series of mnemonic devices, such as feeding, secreting, looking and pointing a gun. A universal language that is internalized and poured in and out again and again. Themes of violence and resistance run through the s tory. Thesymbolic and physical force of the movements is matched by the growing power of the voices, which can be perceived as polyphonic women’s chants. As the performance develops, the limits of the subject gradually dissolve, becoming the body of an imaginary mass. A bulimic contemporary society that swallows, shits, judges and exterminates. Gestures are locked in a loop, and dance and chants intervene to bind and rebalance all forces. The body pushed to the limit does not collapse. It’s a cathartic dimension of the work that heals wounds in the same way they are expressed. “
Text: Andrea Marcellier, visual artist, @le.placebo
