How is this possible? Shanghai in China, Belo Horizonte in Brazil, Glasgow in Scotland, Winnipeg in Canada… The list of cities visited by the visual artist and director Olivier de Sagazan with his performance TransfigurationCreated in 1998, it toured the world. And rather twice than once. The YouTube video of this astonishing half-flesh, half-clay metamorphosis of a man in a suit reached 6.5 million views. Curiously, one country seems to resist fascination: yours.
Very few dates in France and most in confidential places, including Silencio, in Paris, at the invitation of David Lynch, and no institutional recognition for this artist with wild gestures. “Of more than 400 performances there were only ten in our house, Sagazan specifies. I believe that my work escapes the text and theater loved by French culture, as well as the Cartesian rationalism that is ours. The union of body and soul in which I believe worries many. »
question the face
Incredible but true, an evening is approaching before the end of the year. On Monday, December 2, Olivier de Sagazan will perform at Samovar, a modest venue with about 120 seats, in Bagnolet (Seine-Saint-Denis). “It belongs to the FLAG network, Festival and Places of Gestural Arts, which brings together the programmers who support me, including the Théâtre de Châtillon, he indicates. Fortunately I give many workshops to young people. The paradox is that people often talk about my work without knowing that they are talking about me. »
He cites different personalities with whom he has collaborated, including Mylène Farmer, the filmmaker Ron Fricke, the stylist Gareth Pugh and the choreographer Wim Vandekeybus. In a softer way, he plays with the actor David Wahl, whom he wraps in 50 kilograms of clay and flowers in Our hearts on earth. “ It’s always interesting to me to see how Transfiguration is transformed through contact with a text, a dance, a fashion, slips Although it is a kind of adaptation of the original performance. »
Live and relive the impact of Transfigurationsubtitled From the holy face to the head of fleshit does not alter its fierce impact. The first time it explodes without warning during the six-performer show titled The Donkey Masspresented at the Venice Dance Biennale, in 2021. Not far from a horror or science fiction film, but without special effects, this fable unfolds a garland of creatures and monsters whose kneaded clay snouts live and melt with the wave of the hand. “This is what Beckett calls the unspeakable.”, Sagazan emphasizes, He is also a passionate reader of Merleau-Ponty, Artaud, Kafka and Renaud Barbaras.
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