Théo Mercier

Skinless

Performance
La Villette
novembernov 21 - december – dec 21
1/3

Creation 2024

50 minutes

Standing audience

Prices € 8 to € 20
Subscribers € 8 and € 12

Grande Halle de la Villette
211 Av. Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris

La Villette

Thursday november 21

20h

Friday november 22

20h

Saturday november 23

18h

Sunday november 24

16h

Saturday november 30

18h

Sunday december 1

16h

Thursday december 5

20h

Friday december 6

20h

Saturday december 7

18h

Sunday december 8

16h

Conception and direction Théo Mercier. Scenography Théo Mercier, Florent Jacob, François Boulet. Artistic and dramaturgical collaboration Florent Jacob. Artistic and choreographic collaboration Anna Chirescu. Performed and created in collaboration with Bruno Senune, Maxime Thébault, Aurélien Vieillard. Sound design Pierre Desprats. Costumes Théo Mercier, Colombe Lauriot Prevost. Props Etienne Marc. Lighting design Théo Mercier, Florent Jacob, François Boulet. Stage management François Boulet, Sara Ruiz Marmolejo. With the collaboration of the TNB technical team. Production and distribution Alma Office – Alix Sarrade. Administration Charlotte Cancé. 

Production Good World
Coproduction Théâtre national de Bretagne ; Le Quartz – Scène nationale de Brest ; CNDC Angers as part of the hosting-studio programme – ministère de la Culture ; La Villette ; Le Volcan – Scène nationale du Havre in partnership with le Portique, centre régional d’art contemporain du Havre ; Maison de la culture d’Amiens – Pôle européen de création et de production ; CCN Ballet national de Marseille as part of the hosting-studio programme – ministère de la Culture ; Festival d’Automne à Paris
With the support of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
In collaboration with Paprec
Skinless receives production support from Drac Bretagne - Ministère de la Culture
With the support of Montévidéo, Centre d'Art and of the Ménagerie de verre
Courtesy of a studio at the CND Centre national de la danse
Théo Mercier is an associate artist of the Théâtre national de Bretagne

La Villette and the Festival d'Automne à Paris are co-producers of this show and present it as a co-realisation.

Théo Mercier in Par les temps qui cours.
Listen on France Culture

Théo Mercier in the morning show of France Culture
Listen on France Culture

Théo Mercier in les midis de culture
Listen on France Culture

A conversation with Théo Mercier and Laura Vazquez
On Friday 22 November, following the performance, the visual artist and stage director invites the poet to a free dialogue based on the play Skinless. Unfolding questions inspired by the themes of performance, Florian Gaité organises their exchange and their drifts on the chaos of the world, theatricality and the taste for flesh.
Free subject to prior booking, subject to availability. 

Brought to the stage by visual artist Théo Mercier, Skinless is a disenchanted Eden built on a landscape of rubbish. Amidst this XXL end-of-the-world panorama, an out of the ordinary couple loves and tears each other apart under the watchful eye of a tragic observer.

“When you think about everything we throw away…” is one of the things we sometimes mumble when the idea of this mass of non-disintegrating waste that humanity generates becomes too much for us. In Skinless, the enormous blocks of compacted rubbish mirror our outrageous habits as consumers as well as the intricacies of our domestic lives. Dressed in latex suits, the bodies of the two dancers push against each other and intertwine on a bed made of used cardboard. Hovering above them, a third, reflective, metallic, figure passes by on their rounds, evoking the spectre of a society in which generalized surveillance prevails. The waste matter becomes the metaphor for all the couple's happy and unhappy memories. In this new work, Théo Mercier brings us a visceral choreography, characterised by a lyricism which is both dark and strangely erotic. The reason is that even if the couple seems to be under surveillance, as if guilty of not bearing children or of their homosexuality, their never-ending nuptial display manages to flourish in the face of the ambient repression and sexual taboos. By exploring the margins, from the garbage dump to queer relationships, Skinless conjures up the image of love as the last place of resistance to all norms.

In the same place

La Villette
octoberoct 16 – 19

Sorour Darabi, DEEPDAWN
One Thousand and One Nights

Dance

Sorour Darabi, the Iranian choreographer, who has been living in France since 2013, unveils his first opera, an ambulatory performance which enables voices marginalized by ancient myths to be heard. It is a piece devised by and for committed bodies.

La Villette
novembernov 6 – 8

Carolina Bianchi y Cara de Cavalo
Trilogie Cadela Força – Chapitre I : A Noiva e o Boa Noite Cinderela

Theatre

Like descending into the darkest depths of hell, Carolina Bianchi exposes the unspeakable horror of sexist violence, plunging us into a median space in which all memory becomes blurred. Following in the footsteps of the artist Pippa Bacca, she uses her own body for the purposes of the piece, thereby anchoring herself in the history of feminist performance, and casting a critical gaze upon it at the same time.

La Villette
novembernov 28 – 30

Romeo Castellucci, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustav Mahler
Symphonie No. 2 “Résurrection” With the Paris Orchestra

Théâtre musical
Buy tickets

Directed by Romeo Castellucci, Gustav Mahler's Resurrection symphony seems to take on all its tragic grandeur. Masterfully conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Italian director magnifies this monumental work in order bring us a funereal “song of the earth” from which nobody emerges unscathed.

La Villette
decemberdec 12 – 14

Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon
Canine Jaunâtre 3

Dance
Buy tickets

Following on from the Portrait dedicated to her by the Autumn Festival two years ago, Marlene Monteiro Freitas hijacks the match: twenty-five virtuoso performers, each wearing the same number 3 vests, throw the score into disarray, measure themselves against the grotesque and warp the game. This show sees the eccentric choreographer passing on to the Lyon Opera Ballet a jousting match of hybrid times, a carnivalesque fresco in which the human, animal and machine have a tendency to merge.