Funny, new piece by Benjamin Millepied based on the album of the same name by singer and composer Jeff Buckley (1966-1997), has subtitle : “Jeff Buckley dances”. The content of the show is said to be: choreographing the songs of the American artist who tragically drowned in Mississippi while awakening his ghost. He’s dancing, Jeff! Played by Loup Marcault-Derouard, he comes to life on set, playing the guitar. It reviews his life from his birth in California to his disappearance in an intense emotional outburst.
This ambitious production, supported by videos made live by Olivier Simola, delighted the 3,500 spectators of La Seine musicale, on Thursday, November 7. Is it the combined impact of Buckley and Millepied, the unifying and mainstream appeal of a song and dance creation? The places were snatched. Two dates were added at the last minute, in mid-September, to the four initially planned. On Sunday, November 10, 20,000 people will have seen Funny, which will be exhibited on June 17 and 18 at Nuits de Fourvière, in Lyon.
To trace Buckley’s career, Benjamin Millepied, whose music is always the springboard, is based on the 11 songs from the album recorded in 1994 by the artist. A fan of the musician who he discovered in New York in the 1990s, he added a dozen unreleased songs to the soundtrack, published after his death, as well as texts and extracts from his diary. The tone is rock, raw, melancholic, serious. The existential themes of identity, love and fear become tinged with darkness and approach ever darker shores as the show progresses.
agile writing
This mosaic of sounds, voices, gestures and images adorns Funny. Ten performers, actors, singers and dancers, articulate the different parameters. Among them, Ulysse Zangs, also a guitarist, designed musical environments that help maintain the atmosphere of the song. In front of a huge screen located in the center of the stage, a set of moving panels quickly moved around the group reveals luminous architectures. A room appears, a bed tilts.
The narrative framework of Funny, over which Buckley’s definitively captivating voice hovers, is impressed by Millepied’s agile and versatile writing. Caught in the wind of its course, it glides and quickly, lives elastic and bounces in space. Shirts and dresses fly. Numerous duets, as is often the case with Millepied, punctuate the always lively general scenes. The erudite naturalness of the choreographer’s multifaceted style, between twisted classical swing and jazz swing, maintains the epidermal flow of the movement. But letting virtuosity escape sometimes takes on an air of ease overcome by this desire for dance to resemble life and vice versa.
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