Back to Back Theatre

Prior to its first performances in 2027, Back to Back Theatre invites audiences to discover the different phases of work behind NEANDERTHAL—Histoire(s) du théâtre VIII by being present during its rehearsals. This ambitious new piece looks into the themes of extinction and cognition.

GANESH VERSUS THE THIRD REICH, a fable of a droll and moving kind, interweaves two narratives in order to prompt us to examine our perceptions of theatre and handicap. In it, the elephant-headed god travels through Nazi Germany, while the performers ask themselves questions about the pertinence of telling this story. 

Set to music by the Australian trio The Necks, FOOD COURT plunges a woman headlong into the all-too banal horrors of a humiliating experience in the public space. Featuring a cast of three female performers with learning difficulties, the piece transforms into an experience of an intense, unsettling kind.

At the crossroads between urban thriller, social satire and voyeuristic meditation, small metal objects plunges its performers into the perpetual movement of the public space. From within the heart of the crowd, the piece captures all the intensity of a personal drama.

What bridges can be made between Harare, Dakar and Paris? What forms of dialogue and exchange can we imagine between these three cities, their history and present? A proposition made to her by the Festival d’Automne, nora chipaumire’s Carte Blanche —renamed as carte noire—has been drawn up as a form of response to these questions. Formerly based in New York, the  choreographer and dancer has close links with each of these metropoles: in Zimbabwe, the country of her birth and in which she founded nhereraHUB, a place of work and reflection which is open to projects of different kinds; in Senegal, where she spent a long period of time working, notably, with the women of the Toubab Dialaw village; and in Paris where several of her works have been presented, the image of which has given her a love of conversation, in the true sense of the word. 
 

With this musical performance, nora chipaumire revisits and develops, alongside five women belonging to the Lébou community from the village of Toubab Dialaw, in Senegal, the score from her piece NOT waiting...devised in 2023 with the choreographer Germaine Acogny. 

During her second week in Paris, nora chipaumire invites audiences to a carte noire rendez-vous consisting of an evening of dub. She will be setting up a Zimbabwean shebeen, an unofficial bar tucked away in private homes, a place where people come together in order to invent forms of resistance and insurrection in response to the political powers that be.

Part concert part performance, in which voice, gesture and sound collide, #punk draws upon nora chipaumire’s founding years in Zimbabwe, as a means of embodying, in the present, punk energy and rebellion.

The Danish choreographer and dancer Mette Ingvartsen and the Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie have been pursuing their respective creative projects for several years, whilst collaborating remotely. All Around, which premiered at the Festival d’Automne in 2020, is their first joint stage production. 

British vocalist, movement artist and composer of Afro-Caribbean origin, Elaine Mitchener manifests, through the intensity of her presence, voice and gestures, the traces, both past and present, of discrimination and colonial wounds, exposed in all their rawness.

Expect artistic sparks to fly, as two of the strongest figures of the contemporary choreography scene – France's Mathilde Monnier and Spain's La Ribot – team up for Gustavia, their portrait of an ever-elusive woman. This enthralling face à face, offers us a bitingly ironic view of our world, thanks to a refreshing dash of both insolence and humor.

Originally from Buenos Aires, the choreographer and performer Diana Szeinblum turns to Argentinian folklore dances and then deconstructs them. A piece which is both introspective and performative, ADENTRO! delves deep into the inner workings of bodily forms shaped by popular imagination and its gestures.

Sphere / Kurah is an installation in which body, voice and gesture permeate each other. By means of screens, projections and translucent surfaces, images detach themselves from the body and become traces, lights, and glimmers. Within this passage from presence towards fragility, the work attaches itself to forms of survival.