Ten dancers appear on the stage of the Suresnes Cités Danse festival in this creation dedicated to suspended moments when human beings have the feeling of coming out of themselves.
Tender Anger, the creation presented at the opening of the 33rd edition of the Suresnes Cités Danse festival, is a contemporary piece, created at the Jean Vilar theater as part of an artists’ residency. It will be danced three times, on the 10th, 11th and 12th. January. Its two choreographers, François and Christian Ben Aïm, allowed us to attend the spinning at the end of December, a rehearsal of the entire show in real conditions, but without an audience. The result was already more than promising.
The title of the show is an oxymoron, the marriage of two words with contradictory meanings. Its genesis dates back to Practical jokestheir previous piece presented in Suresnes in 2023. The Ben brothers Aïm say that while working on this comic ballet, they began to become interested in “to an inadvertent gesture, to a form of clumsiness, of forgetting oneself, a movement which is constructed outside of one’s will. They then wonder about the different ways to be “beside oneself” : “There is of course anger. But not only that. There are moments when we are not necessarily in excess or overflow, but in relaxation, in a certain distraction, moments when we rely on others.” Which explains the title of their creation, Tender anger : “It seemed interesting to us to compare these two energies, in excess and in gentleness.”
Back to spinning. On a large, bare white stage, ten dancers move around a single decorative element, a long, fleshless branch. Some have already donned the costumes designed by Mossi Traoré, a committed designer who promotes access to fashion and culture in the heart of the most remote neighborhoods. One of her trademarks is to create gender-neutral clothing.
“This is the first time we have collaborated, says Christian Ben Aïm, and it actually interested us that men could wear skirts and women pants, that there were no such limitations“. His brother completes : “The states we pass through have no gender. What matters is the intimacy that takes place in these places, independently of the question of gender.”
For the music, they called on Patrick de Oliveira, a versatile artist who is an author, composer, performer and sound engineer for live shows. This is again a first collaboration. “We wanted to work on the question of trance, of pulsation, of a rhythm that carries us away and which is, at the same time, tinged with different influences, world music, for example oriental music.” explains François Ben Am.
The work between the musician, the choreographers, and the dancers was done jointly, throughout the creation, and this is felt as the music seems written on and with their bodies. A gentle energy emerges from the overall movements. The arm work is magnificent. Like whirling dervishes, the dancers seem at times to invite us to enter their whirlwind shrouded in magical colors, blood red or dawn blue. Lights due to their accomplice Laurent Patissier with whom they have worked since 1998 and their piece The scrapped man.
For Carolyn Occelli, the director of the Jean Vilar theater, Tender angerresponds to a need linked to the concerns of the times. “I findshe explains, that we live in a fairly violent world, of individual and community withdrawal. I liked their ambition to harness the power of the collective – ten dancers on stage is a lot – and to work on questions of abandonment, when we are overwhelmed by our own emotions.” She adds that “it has something animal and fraternal at the same time. That’s what spoke to me.”
The Ben Aïm brothers have been associated artists with the Jean Vilar theater since September 2023. They open the ball this year with this ambitious piece which they present as “a utopian manifesto, a dancing chimera and a snub to the madness of the world“. A beautiful introduction for the 33rd edition of the festival which will bring together over a month 17 choreographers and more than 85 dancers and performers.
