I'VE SEEN IT ALL

 ABOUT THE PIECE

// World Premiere: 16th September 2011, Les Halles, Sierre (CH) // Germany Premiere: 6th October 2011, Theater im Ballsaal, Bonn
// In co-production with Theater im Ballsaal, Bonn / Les Halles, Sierre (CH) / Théâtre du Crochetan, Monthey (CH)
// Funded by: Théâtre-Pro Valais / Loterie Romande / L’encouragement des activités culturelles du canton du Valais / MIGROS pour-cent culturel / Kunststiftung NRW / Bundesstadt Bonn / Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen within the programme support for the best independent dance companies

Six dancers and a Foley walker lure the spectator/listener into an intense game of spoken texts, music and noises, of spaces and movements. The focus in on Henry’ bizarre, fickle world that continuously changes between waking and dreaming, and which is released by a voice from the darkness. The invisible can be heard, the unexpressed becomes visible. The ear which is void of distance outplays the eye that keeps a distance. The eye is selective, the ear alert. The eye watches for prey, the ear listens to danger. Whatever I hear, wants to get into closer contact with me, whatever I see, wants to dissociate itself from me. For “I’ve seen it all”, Cocoondance has developed a theatre language, in which scenic and sonic elements are connected in an exceptional way. The result is a “listening performance”, a game with movements to listen to!

BY AND WITH

Volkhard Samuel Guist, Martin Inthamoussu, Athanasia Kanellopoulou, Maura Morales, Victoria Perez, Morgan Rhiannon, Joerg Ritzenhoff /// Choreography: Rafaële Giovanola // Light design: Marc Brodeur /// Costume: Sabine Schnetz /// Sound, music Jörg Ritzenhoff /// Copywriting and advice: Bastien Fournier /// Artistic advice: Carmen Mehnert /// Choreographic assistance: Marcelo Omine /// Dramaturgy: Rainald Endrass

PRESS REVIEWS

“The audience sets out on a breathtaking journey through their desires. The six dancers and composer Joerg Ritzenhoff conquer space, and fill it with dance that is far away from common images. Sensational!“
JFA, Le Nouvelliste, 9/21/2011

“The acoustic universe of I'VE SEEN IT ALL shows how the release of sound creates emotions and strong images. (…) This performance is extremely fascinating.“
Isabelle Bagnoud Loretan, Le JDS - journal de Sierre et du Valais central, 9/23/2011

“The dance is full of energy and rhythm, and completely void of pathos. The technique and the form provide a closer understanding of the topic than any sensitive interpretation has been capable of so far. “I've seen it all“ by Rafaële Giovanola is about incest. (…) The sound spins the red thread of a story that, completely structured, provides perfect sense for the often quite abstract body movements.”
Marie Parvey: Valais-mag, 17.09.2011

“Using light and sound fragments, and movements, a puzzle game of love and power is assembled piece by piece.” The audience, which is placed around the square stage of the Theatre im Ballsaal, cannot get hold of the radio play performer at any moment during the whole duration of the play. He is director and audience at the same time, and thus, an almost ideal surface for the audience’s thoughts and ideas, since Rafaële Giovanola’s latest Cocoondance production “I’ve seen it all”, breaks consciously and quite thoroughly with valid guidelines of dance theatre. The result is a puzzle game. Not easy to follow, but worth to watch in any case. “I’ve seen it all” tells the story of incest – however, the story does not impose itself on the audience. In the long run, what it is really about, - within the family and outside of it – are love and power. The same actors are quite often simultaneously perpetrator and victim. They move within a frame of text fragments and noises; alone, in pairs, in threes. They draft a “love triangle” alternating between a healthy aggression, self-defense, and a strange kind of devotion. (...) If you want it to be like this; but you don’t have to. Because “I’ve seen it All” permits more than one interpretation. Each chair allows for one individual performance. At the beginning, it could be any experiment with light and sound. Then, it takes up speed, and it is too late for withdrawal or denial. Or, in other words, one is simply fascinated.”
Ulrike Strauch, General-Anzeiger, Bonn, 08-10-2011

“…games which you can only hear but not see, open up spaces for your own fantasies… spread a surreal world around you as a counterpart to reality that deals with family intrigues between father, mother, and daughter. The radio play performers in the Theatre im Ballsaal, however, do not get involved in these games in the true sense of the word… Not the information becomes important but the ways it travels. Loud and enduring applause.”
Heinz-Dieter Terschüren, Bonner Rundschau, 12-10-2011

“The dance piece by Rafaële Giovanola that deals with incest and sexual violence, starts with sounds: female footsteps disappearing into the distance. A door closes with a thud. A fly buzzes as if trapped. The disaster takes its course. Everything happens directly in our full view. Not in tangible images, however, because nothing happens that would make a voyeur out of the audience. It is much worse than that: Through the way the chairs are placed, through the events directly in front of your eyes, we turn into someone who is in on the secret. (…) The production enhances the suffocating situation for the audience by putting six male and female dancers between the audience and thus dragging us even deeper into the complex mesh of a “love triangle” between father, mother, and daughter. (…) On all levels, the performance uses this subtle mix, this as-well-as, this ambiguity. Everyone can be the perpetrator, or the victim. This fact, however, is never stated explicitly, but can only be glimpsed as if coming from some unidentifiable, horrible shadow zone. (…) The chaos of emotions is even more emphasized by an irritating acoustic wagon, driven by composer Joerg Ritzenhoff across the stage, and used by him to carry unsettling whispers, rustlings, and screams that escalate to a cacophony of noises, up to even the last corners of the hall. Black, traumatic, full of excessive dance performance and sonic overkill, the production explores the whole landscape of emotions.”
Klaus Keil, CHOICES, Cologne, 10-2011