The context

Mrs Spriet, Vice-President of the Friends of Museums and founder of the Federation of Friends of Museums, wanted to set up a project that would question society's view of the visual handicap in particular. Accompanied by several blind people, they commissioned a live performance that could be understood by both a classical and a blind audience. The commissioners wanted the show to enable the visionaries to understand or imagine how the blind perceive the world (space, people, things) through sounds, voices, movements ; and, conversely, how a viewer can project himself and be projected into a situation of blindness in both the literal and the figurative sense. In order to make the proposed show accessible to the visually impaired, the patrons wanted to give sound, music and text a central place.

The commission

De quoi tenir jusqu'à l'ombre interrogates our perceptions of others and things by combining dance, video, texts and sound creation. Christian Rizzo and the Compagnie de l'Oiseau-Mouche exceed the expectations of the patrons by integrating into the creation the innovative research project led by Valérie Castan on audio-description in the choreographic field. She wishes to translate the movements and gestures of the actors into words so that the visually impaired and blind audience can develop their own perception and imagination of the dancing body. This decoding and translation work, carried out using the methodology applied to cinema, has never before been designed for dance. Before each performance, a tactile tour of the stage and set will be offered to visually impaired or blind people. A live commentary will then be broadcast to them by headphones during the performance. Calendar of performances: From 24 January to 1 February 2013 (released on 27 January 2013) at the Théâtre de l'Oiseau-Mouche / Le Garage in Roubaix From Tuesday 19 to Saturday 30 March 2013 (released on 24 and 25 March 2013) at Parc de La Villette in Paris Full programme of the tour on the site of the company de l'oiseau-mouche.

Christian Rizzo

The commission was given to choreographer Christian Rizzo and the Compagnie de l'Oiseau-Mouche, a permanent group of 23 actors, people with mental disabilities. Christian Rizzo's work is made up of bridges between the different fields of contemporary creation. His choreographic works have obvious aesthetic and conceptual affinities with the contemporary art scene. For the commission, the choreographer wanted to work with the actors of the Compagnie de l'Oiseau-Mouche on the themes that run through his work : the presence of the body, the perception of space, the tension between the visible and the invisible, the encounter with the other and doubt.