Nina Laisné, François Chaignaud, Nadia Larcher

Choreographer François Chaignaud and beatboxer Aymeric Hainaux weave a physical and musical alchemy in which sound, voice and rhythm intertwine with performative intensity. Fracas × 7 is the continuation of Mirlitons, in its exploration of a unique body and sound-based language.

Nina Laisné and François Chaignaud invite us on a journey into the heart of the art of romance, in the company of a multi-faceted Orlando. Using this musical material and the stories that run through it it as a starting point, they give shape to a piece which intertwines eras and dances. It is a magic lantern in which the androgynous figures of San Miguel and Doncella Guerrera parade before us.

Mirlitons is an encounter between two voices and two bodies, those of choreographer François Chaignaud and beatboxer Aymeric Hainaux. It gives rise to a physical and musical alchemy in which sound, voice and rhythm combine to form an unclassifiable performative intensity. 

The encounter between the Japanese butoh dancer Akaji Maro, master of the strange and the absurd, and the multi-faceted singer and choreographer François Chaignaud turns their duet at the frontiers of different genres into a pagan ritual, a celebration of bodies in all their states. GOLD SHOWER, a mirrored portrait of two unclassifiable figures, transcends differences in which the joy of disruption is played out to the full. 

The outrageous challenge taken up by Marie-Pierre Brébant and François Chaignaud is to perform the complete musical works of Hildegard von Bingen. Like two figures from another era, they invite us to a take a plunge – both vocally and physically. Within this corpus, each note, each movement opens up access to new perception-based worlds.

With their bodies vacuum-packed into black latex bags borrowed from the world of S&M, the sylphs evoke, by turns, recumbent figures set in stone, cocoons made of some kind of dark-coloured matter or body bags. What unfurls in this piece piece is a perception-based enigma, which deftly slips from ancient statuary into Body Art. This Portrait brings Sylphides back to life, the first mythical piece co-signed by Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud in 2009, performed here in a choral and immersive version.

"Tumer", in Old French, means to dance, stir, or fall backwards. In the company of a collective of singing, dancing, and constantly transforming tumerels, Geoffroy Jourdain and François Chaignaud have concocted a mischievous review. Moving between different eras and genres, from polyphonic singing to variety, it brings this Portrait, and indeed the 2025 edition of the Festival d'Automne, to a close.

Thirty years after it was first performed, the South African visual artist William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company breathe new life into their Faustus in Africa! Behind its nostalgia-inspired aesthetic, this irreverent reinterpretation of Goethe is as relevant as ever.

In November 2023, the Festival d'Automne hosted an audience encounter with Angela Davis in which reflections on current events in the arts intersected with global political issues. From out of this meeting came the idea of an École du soir “evening school”, in conjunction with the Centre Pompidou and in collaboration with the Senegalese intellectual and economist Felwine Sarr, The different events focus on a central question, that of a “A life in common”.

Bouchra Khalili is the visual arts guest at the 2025 edition of the Festival d'Automne. Born in 1975 in Casablanca, she lives in Vienna, Austria and works in an itinerant manner. For more than twenty years, she has been producing rigorously conceived works that function as visual and discursive hypotheses, and which take into account the contemporary issues of art and the world. Her work seeks to overturn geographies, narratives and official histories in order to restore depth and precision to reality and its protagonists. Bringing together recent works and new productions, her project entitled Astérismes (Fig. 1 à 3) takes to three theatre stages its exploration of the links between the representation of long-lost stories, performance art and moving images.

Pascal Rambert, a major author and director of his generation, finds himself once again in the company of his faithful companions in an ambitious fresco dealing with the passage of time and family ties. Intended as a trilogy spanning five years, it explores what is left behind by our commitments and ruptures.