La Ribot
Mathilde Monnier
Tiago Rodrigues Please Please Please
[Dance]
Setting in motion the text and dance in equal measure, La Ribot and her two accomplices make a non-contractual deal guaranteed, or almost, not to keep to any of its promises. This basic premise enables them to look into the body’s inherently unruly nature and to bring it into opposition with the discipline of society’s institutions.
In Please Please Please, her latest creation to date in 2019, La Ribot joins forces once again with the choreographer Mathilde Monnier, with whom she collaborated on Gustavia, and for the first time with the Portuguese director Tiago Rodrigues. Together they sign up to a deregulated pact by which the three of them commit to preserving all that is untameable about dance. A sort of counter-proposition to the social contract, the agreement circumvents the norms of dramatic representation in order to allow the onstage bodies to express themselves in whatever way they see fit, including the unwitting participation of the audience in the process. The piece examines the effect that the institution itself, ranging from schools to art centres, can have on the body. It does this by means of a series of figures each characterised by their marginalised nature, presented here as different ways of getting round the expected norms. Please Please Please mutualises, in their own words, the dance of the beautiful with that of the vile in a polymorphous performance which takes the untamed or the savage as the prism for its reading. In the course of this negotiation, the clauses of the show find themselves being constantly redefined. Placed in a position of autonomy, each of them is free to experience their own body, to the extent of ridicule and the ridiculous, uncertainty and dysfunction.
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Estimated running time : 1h15
