Des Chimères dans la tête offers a profound exploration of childhood’s abyssal imagination, highlighted and enriched through visual arts and choreographic expression.

 

Three dancers, hidden behind the set, defy gravity to sometimes reveal an arm, a leg, maybe a hand reminiscent to paws, wings, antennae!

 

They complete the bodies of the chimeras drawn on the screen until they step out of the frame and dance on the stage to give a full and complete life to these strange creatures.

 

This children’s story alternates between phantasmagorias, nightmares, and dashes of humour, stirring up trouble and fnding amusement in optical illusions, introducing a never-before-seen game with the
audience.

© Hervé Plumet

 

This artistic project was born from the collabo- rative encounter of choreographer Sylvian Groud, plastic artist Françoise Pétrovitch, and audiovisual creator Hervé Plumet. It’s the second co-creation between the choreographer and the plastic artist, authors of Adolescent, a 2019 Ballet du Nord creation, a piece for 10 performers that plunges the viewer into the troubled and bubbling waters of adolescence.

Des Chimères dans la tête offers a profound exploration of childhood’s abyssal imagination. It is a performance where the danced gesture reveals what the child perceives unbeknownst to grown-
ups.

 

Seeing the drawn characters come to life from the blank sheet was our childhood dream. It is still the dream of children today. Des Chimères dans la tête suggests the possibility of this dream.

 

© Hervé Plumet

 

Setup
A rectangular screen foats in the centre of the stage. On this screen, are projected the chimeras, born from the mind of a child. Figures from another world, monstrous and sublime, flled with an irresistible symbolic force… They come to life almost bursting out of the frame.

 

Hidden behind the screen, three performers defy gravity to make parts of the body appear that are extensions of the paper chimeras. These apparitions reveal paws, feet, wings, eyes, hair.

 

 

The creatures eventually step out of the frame and dance on the stage. The result is a children’s story that alternates between phantasmagorias, nightmares, and dashes of humour. Stirring up trouble and playing with optical illusions, Des Chimères dans la tête introduces a never-before-seen game with the audience.

 

SYLVAIN GROUD, artist director and choreographer
Sylvain Groud, is a graduate of the CNSMD (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse) / Conservatoire of Paris. He started his career alongside Gigi Caciuleanu and then Angelin Preljocaj. Winner of the International Competition of Paris with his first choreography, he continued his work of creation around two main axes : in-situ pieces and the relationship between music and dance. With his dance company MAD, he created more than 30 pieces between 1994 and 2018. In the same year, he was appointed Artistic Director of Ballet du Nord, CCN Roubaix Hauts-de-France, and created the interactive performance Let’s Move! and the duet Dans mes bras. In 2019, he created Metamorphose, followed by Adolescent, a first collaboration with Françoise Pétrovitch. In 2020, in response to the health crisis, he created the piece 4m2 at the Théâtre Grand Bleu in Lille. It was then presented in theatres labelled Scène nationale, in dance festivals, and also in non-dedicated venues like middle schools, residential care facilities for elderly dependent persons, and shops.

 

Since 2020, he has regularly collaborated with the videographer Léonard Barbier-Hourdin for the creation of choreographic films. Rooted in the region of Hauts-de-France, these projects mostly involve the locals. Some of these projects include Symbiose, réveil sur le terril (with 80 enthusiast amateurs), Huis clos (carte blanche offered by the museum of Louvres Lens), and Bouge ton Bassin for the 10th anniversary of the inclusion of the Nord-pas-de Calais Mining Bassin on the UNESCO World Heritage list. In the autumn of 2021, he created two choreographic duets : L’autre and Lorsque l’enfant était enfant.

 

 

FRANÇOISE PÉTROVITCH, plastic artist
Since the 1990s, Françoise Pétrovitch has created some of the most powerful works in the French art world. Ceramics, glass, ink washes, painting, print, and video are among the various techniques she uses, with drawing holding an esteemed place. In ongoing communication with the artists who have preceded her and engaging with the essential themes of ‘‘high art’’ such as Saint Sebastian and still lifes, Pétrovitch unveils an ambiguous world that willingly transgresses conventional boundaries and eludes interpretation.

Intimacy, fragments, and vanishing, alongside themes like the double, transition, and cruelty, permeate her work, which is inhabited by animals, fowers, and beings. The mood, alternating between light and dark, rarely leaves the spectator unmoved.

 

Solo exhibitions are often devoted to her, both in France and abroad, in the same way as the Hélène and Édouard Leclerc fund in Landreau and the Bibliothèque nationale de France hosted a major retrospective of her work, and an exhibition was dedicated to her in 2022 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In 2018, she was the frst contemporary artist to be awarded a solo exhibition at the Louvre-Lens Museum. For several years, Françoise Pétrovitch has created monumental wall drawings and large-format ensembles for the Galerie des Enfants at the Centre Pompidou, the West Bund Museum in Shanghai, and for the Ballet du Nord, CCN Roubaix Hauts-de-France for the piece Adolescent created in 2019.

 

Her works are included in many public and private collections, in particular the Centre Pompidou in Paris (FR), Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar (NL), the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC (US), Musée Jenisch in Vevey (CH), the museums of Modern and Contemporary Art in Saint-Étienne (FR) and Stras-bourg (FR), and MAC VAL (FR). Numerous FRACs (Regional Funds for Contemporary Art), as well as the Salomon and Guerlain Foundations, the Hélène and Édouard Leclerc Fund, and the Emerige Endowment Fund, also hold her works.

 

HERVÉ PLUMET, author, director, photographer
After studying applied arts in Lyon, he worked in several agencies as an artistic director. From 2009, he became a freelance photographer and director, primarily working in the field of cultural communication: Le Musée du Jouet (The Toy Museum), la Manufacture de Sèvres, le Musée de la Chasse (The Museum of Hunting) in Paris...

 

In collaboration with Françoise Pétrovitch, he made 5 videos, including one which was presented in the Marseille 2013 cultural event. The last one, ECHO, is displayed at the MACVAL museum. As a director, he has made several films known as ‘great causes’:
- For the LICRA, he created a film that raises awareness about viral racism.
- For the CCFT, he worked on a project against tax havens.
- For the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, he collaborated with Julie Depardieu, who is an actress.
- For the Abbé Pierre Foundation, he created both the film and the posters.
- His latest film is against violence against women for the FNSF

In publishing, he collaborated on several occasions with Françoise Pétrovitch: Mes familiers (Sémiose Edition), The FRAC of Alsace in 2004, and Ne bouge pas poupée (CIAV edition, Meisenthal in 2008). In 2010, he also collaborated with Eric Pessan on La fête immobile (Presque Lune edition) and published Ne rien oublier (Arles edition), for which he created the text and the photographs.