PAST CREATIONS

Fascinating sense of instrumentation and undissectable movement: hypnotic and dreamlike until a pitch of physical and sonic intensity forces you to look around the audience to see who is going to crack...a captivating work which really challenges the boundaries of the observer’s consciousness.

Prof. Eugene Douglas, Dept. Theater/Dance, University of New Mexico.

 







Les Mains de l'Argentière



Blurring the borderline between dance and theater, Les Mains de l'Argentière, arises from the choreographer's desire to share anonymous portraits of patients recovering from long periods of coma. A dancer and an accordion player, in a rare proximity, embody liminal human presences, unknown gestures and expanded temporalities, offering a new regard on fragile and isolated lives. Between breath-taking emergence and new departures, micro-events, cataclysms of awakening, manifest our humanity...  This project follows a time of artistic residency in the neurology ward of the Centre Médical de l’Argentière.


In 2019, the choreographer Ephia Gburek was artist-in-residence in the neurology ward of the Centre Médical de l'Argentière. Through the sensitivity of her movement, she encountered patients recovering from long periods of coma. These individuals, suffering from disorders of the consciousness, live in unique states of presence/absence. Delicate meetings through the poetry of the dancing body, shared sensations and imaginations stand-out starkly against an endless flow of identical days : bedridden, nearly immobile, distanced from language, without real sleep, without real wakefulness. 

Les Mains de l'Argentière, arises from the choreographer's desire to share anonymous portraits of patients on the perilous path of re-emergence from coma. Deeply marked by her encounters, she incarnates the striking physicalities of these individuals, their gossamer modes of communication, and the difficulty of reinhabiting a deserted body. Such liminal human presences, unknown gestures and expanded temporalities, open a new regard on fragile and isolated lives.

Les Mains de l'Argentière invites the audience into the intimacy of an individual hospital room. The scenography includes a bed, a rolling chair which evokes the situation of handicap, and an old telephone---broken and archaic, symbolizing the rupture of communication. Rumpled bedding proliferates each day, marking the shrunken perimeter of a new existence. White liquid clay has been poured over the entire bed-island, left to dry, to crack and create a place ossified in Time. The audience discovers a room which materializes absence, a room abandoned after an avalanche, after an accident that deviates the path of a lifetime.

We find the musician bedridden. The accordion restricts and alters his physicality, becomes the outgrowth of his thorax, and suggests artificial respiration, or the coming and going of the tide. Musician and dancer evolve through a subtle relationship: each embodies alternatively the patient and the caregiver, nurse, porter, or visiting family members. Their roles interchange endlessly as body-states and modes of consciousness transfuse from one to the other. They pass through troubling immobilities, hindered gestures, the intensity of a reinhabited gaze, or the chaotic activity of a nervous system seeking to reconnect.

In an atmosphere of suspended time, steeped in silence, they reveal uncommon existences, sublime being-states that transgress our quotidian ways. From a fossilized body emerges a sigh, a trembling, a fluttering of eyelids. These micro-events, cataclysms of awakening, manifest our humanity.

Premiered in November 2021 at Chok Théâtre in Saint Etienne, France. Will be presented at UNIDRAM festival in Potsdam on October  13th 2022.

Stage direction/ dance : Ephia Gburek
Live music/ stage presence : Vincent Valente
Co-direction/ lighting : Stéphane Raveyre 
Visual et sound recordings : Céline Pierre

With the support of la ville de Saint-Étienne and le département de La Loire. Residences & coproductions at Le Chok Théâtre, La Fab-ka, La Chambre d'eau (59), and Le Théâtre de Chambre / 232U.

video: LES MAINS DE L'ARGENTIÈRE 

interview about the création

photo: Céline Pierre








FIN.AGAIN

 


Géant littéraire, James Joyce passe sa vie proche de la cécité. Il nomme sa fille unique Lucia. Elle est son miroir mental, son mot-croisé, la protectrice de sa vue. Derrière les verres épais de ses lunettes, il la regarde danser, allumant les feux qui seront le carburant du livre Finnegans Wake, et qui la détacheront à tout jamais de la réalité.

FIN.AGAIN exprime par le corps, le son, la voix, les principaux thèmes du texte Finnegans Wake et la vie de James et Lucia Joyce. Finnegans Wake est un texte de six cent pages, une collision entre plus de quarante langues, se déroulant en une seule nuit dans la vie d’un homme déjà mort ou pour le moins dormant – un anti héro ? ou un monticule rempli de vers de terre ? Sur scène les corps féminin et masculin se noient dans la nuit de l’inconscient. Le temps s’étire, explose ses limites, s’arrête. Et nous rêvons, ballotés d’un courant de pensée à un autre, secoués par des flots de langages inconnus. Nous atteignons la surface d’un miroir pour mieux replonger dans les eaux du sommeil. Réfléchissements, jeu d’ombre et de lumière, tendresse et tabous entre un père poète et sa muse de fille. La cécité, le désir, un soleil noir qui se contracte, une pupille qui se dilate. Les oreilles d’un somnambule deviennent pour lui « les yeux de l’obscurité » et les sons de la contrebasse les fantomes qui l'entourent. La danseuse, telle Lucia, a « passé le cap »… a touché sa fin… sa fin qui n’est qu’un commencement. FIN.AGAIN.

Danse et mise en voix : EPHIA GBUREK Contrebass : BENOIT CANCOIN

Une première version de cette création tourne avec le titre Mirrorminded Curiousitease de 2006 à 2008: Galerie Rachel Haferkamp, Köln ; Theater Kapelle, Berlin ; Espace 44, Lyon ; La Menuiserie, Rodez avec le soutien du Conseil Général de L’Aveyron ; puis à UNIDRAM festival, Potsdam. La pièce est reprise en 2015, sous une forme dédiée aux espaces non-théâtrales, à l'intérieure comme à l'extérieure. Elle est présenté entre 2015 et 2019 à Lyon, à Valdrome, à Rennes, et à Vaux en Beaujolais.
Pour voir la vidéo







EVICTION un duo de Céline Pierre et Ephia Gburek




Ce projet multi-média, conçu par la compositrice visuelle et sonore Céline Pierre, suit les interrogations que vit notre société dans sa recherche ou son refus d'ouverture. 

L’écriture de EVICTION sollicite des séquences visuelles et sonores du campement de Calais enregistrées lors de son démantèlement. Chemins, terrains vagues et aires calcinées, là où la voix cherche à se faire chemin, tout effleure ici en situation d’effacement. L’ensemble provoque une suspension du temps et de l’espace où retentit convocations, évocations et disparition des voix anonymes. L'écriture sonore est alors mise en relation avec un autre corpus d'éléments: suspensions, équilibres précaires, effondrements, et relèvements de la danse d'Ephia Gburek. L'ensemble tente une traversée.

Écriture sonore réalisée au laboratoire de composition du Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Reims et en résidence au Centre National de Création Musicale Césaré-Reims.  Avec le soutien de la Région Grand Est.
Écriture mouvement réalisée en résidence au Centre National de la Danse-Pantin, au Magasin, et à la Fab-Ka, Saint-Etienne.


CELINE PIERRE – conception, écriture visuelle et sonore
EPHIA GBUREK – écriture mouvement et interpretation

10. 2017 Festival « en chair et en son » au Cube à Issy-les-Moulineaux
10. 2018  “Rebond” de la Biennale de la Danse à L'Usine, Saint-Etienne

TRANSMISSION :  Du 18 au 22 avril 2018 au Studio Garcia Lorca à Bruxelles Ephia Gburek mene un stage de recherche corporelle sur les questions d'accueil et de résilience mise en pratique avec la notion de “corps commun” ; ponctué de rencontres avec Julien Wolsey, avocat en droit des étrangers, avec Cihan Gunes, psychologue SSM Ulysse qui éclairera la dimension psychique de l’exil, et avec Alain Loute, philosophe qui viendra échanger sur les questions d'hospitalité et de spatialité. A partir des études visuelles et sonores et du texte STASé.IS (chroniques de campement) de Celine Pierre, y sera exploré avec les participants du workshop, la notion de « corps commun vocal ».  https://celinepierrefilms.tumblr.com/ 
photo: Céline Pierre

Projet M   

CONTRE-IMAGE

"Imaginairement, la Photographie (celle dont j’ai l’intention) représente ce moment très subtil ou, a vrai dire, je ne suis ni sujet ni objet, mais plutôt un sujet qui se sent devenir objet : je vis alors une micro –expérience de la mort (de la parenthèse) : je deviens vraiment spectre." Roland Barthes, La Chambre Claire

Touched by the work of photographer Francesca Woodman and the essay of Roland Barthes "Camera
Lucida" four artists explore the “entre-deux” of the still photographic image and the moving image of the dancer on stage. Shifting from the body to its representation and back again, in the displacement of one medium to another, a recurring gesture from the outside to the inside, we discover a delicate territory where the image reveals itself in that which is disappearing.

We investigate the human presence: its evanescence and enduring after-image (im)possible to capture inside the photo. We wish to confront the image and its double, to expose the traces of an action, to sense a presence remaining despite absence. We seek a liminal passage. A membrane which separates two existences.

CONTRE-IMAGE was created in residence at Opera Théâtre of Saint-Etienne ;  MICADANSE, Paris ; CCN of Rillieux-la-Pape/Cie Maguy Marin ;   l’Atelier de Paris, Carolyn Carlson.

CONTRE-IMAGE premiered in the festival “Nous N’irons Pas à Avignon,” Vitry-sur-Seine, in July 2009.



Dancer and choreography
Ephia Gburek, Yael Karavan
Contrabass by Benoit Cancoin
Film and sound compositions by Céline Pierre

To see the video of CONTRE-IMAGE

MIRRORMINDED CURIOUSITEASE

Mirrorminded Curiositease physicalizes through the body, sound, and video projection the themes prevalent in Finnegan’s Wake, and in the lives of James and Lucia Joyce. The dancer herself is the screen for the projection: flesh washed over by image. The body drowns in the nocturnal pools of the unconscious. She dreams, tossed from one stream of thought to another, soaked through by sound-flows of unknown languages. She rises, gasping, to the mirrory surface, only to sink even deeper into the waters of sleep…Play of shadow and light, tenderness and taboo between father poet and daughter muse. Blindness, desire, a contracting black sun, or the rapidly dilating pupil. Sensitive ears of the sleepwalker become “the eyes of obscurity” and the nose a compass seeking the beloved. Two tree-filled horizons form a river which swallows the dancer. The goliath text of Finnegans Wake gives birth to a sonic environment as Joyce’s “hundredletter thunderwords”  are spoken by a computer using the vocal patterns of  different languages; they resound and resemble the roaring of beasts and oceans.   
 

MMC premiered on April 25, 2006 at Galerie Rachel Haferkamp, Köln, and then played at Theater Kapelle in Berlin.  In 2007, MMC was shown at Espace 44 in Lyon and at La Menuiserie in Rodez with the support of Conseil Général de L’Aveyron. In 2008, it was presented in Potsdam at UNIDRAM 15 festival.

Choreography :  Ephia Gburek
Interpretation : Ephia Gburek, Adam Palermo, and Benjamin Kraus (alternatively)
Live prepared guitar/sound composition  Jeff Gburek
Video projections:  Diego Agullo

(MYOPIA)2

(MYOPIA)2 A nearly-blind schoolgirl, bespectacled. Dreaming through a haze of myopia, she runs into herself, her skin seeing more than her eyes. She is most certainly teetering on the awkward verge of puberty... when everything is lost: split in two. There is no teacher, no correction. Only the immediate reflections of primitive ghosts and autonomic machines seeking the (dis)equilibrium of an unseeable future. (MYOPIA)2 Addresses the notion of seeing and being seen. Who is the viewer and who is being viewed? In a nearly blind world, all sounds enter the sphere of perception, stirrings of actors and audience alike. (MYOPIA)2 Unable to focus on the lesson at hand, a turbulent body undergoing metamorphosis scrawls quivering lines of Quatsch across the chalkboards, traversing the dangerous territory between madness and pure creativity, stigma and individuality. (MYOPIA)2 Her body refuses to conform, its burgeoning sexuality, awkward and feverish, has more in common with the mating practices of insects. At the schizophrenic onset of puberty, the myopic girl is replicated in an endlessly expanded moment. She bends too far and her double appears. Performed 2005-2006 in Berlin at KuLe ArtHouse, Hau 3, and GAYA-Karmanoia Theater; in Amsterdam at Overtoom 301; in Potsdam at UNIDRAM 13. Festival fuer junges Theater in Europa; and in Holstebro, Denmark @ ODIN Teatret; in Lyon at Le Croiseur; and in Saint Affrique at Le Petit Carré D'Art.    choreography:  Ephia Gburek  interpretation: Ephia Gburek and Ana Kavalis live sound:  jeff gburek (lap-top/prepared guitar)

Ci-Gît: six pregnancies for Antonin Artaud

The extensive research for "Ci-Gît" took Djalma to Mexico’s Sierra Tarahumara in October 2003. Artaud visited the Tarahumara Indians in the 1930’s seeking to learn about the visionary experiences of those who "eat right out of the earth the delirium that gave birth to them" and whose vigorously physical spirituality Artaud thought offered a remedy to Western technological decadence. The first version of the work, entitled "wife, life, tripe, damnit and THAT," premiered April 2004 in Austin, TX at a welder's studio; then traveled to  Birmingham, AL at the site of an old slaughter house;  New Orleans, LA at the site of a former brothel; to Phoenix, AZ at Teatro Caliente Festival. In 2005 this work was performed in Europe under the title: "Ci-Gît: six pregnancies for Antonin Artaud" at ODIN Teatret; Les Explorateurs Associés Festival; Les Voutes, Paris; Espace Antonin Artaud--Rodez, in the asylum chapel where Artaud attended mass; further presentations in Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, New York City, and San Fransisco.

dying breath: explorations at the threshold

death and the waiting room/ moments of departure (spark) memories of synaptic decay/ the (subtraction) of a limb, the irreversible sound of wooden ornaments, tightening at the knot/ as you watch the wood bend until there are knees/ as the image fills the sticky likelihood of the frame (mouthing)/ the meeting of surfaces (of metal to metal, of sound to eardrum, sound/light to skin, skin/light to eye, eye to inner eye of brain, perception to memory) is primarily erotic and death/ this is also birth/ resist it, if you can… you are on your own/you are on repeat.

A Djalma Primordial Science performance artifact, decomposed by en.ve.lope project. A study of minutia, patience and transformation: slowly evolving performance footage collaged with digital imagery and text. 28 min DVD completed 2/2/05. 

ASYLUM: a study of place and ghost

A trans-media installation reflecting on the poetics of abandonment. Dancer Ephia, experimental musician Jeff Gburek, video artist Ben Walsh, and photographer Yekaterina Yushmanova have been conducting physical research in New Mexico's abandoned institutions for over a year. Entering into the dilapidated architectures of old mental institutions, facilities for the developmentally disabled, homes for the elderly, correctional institutions, they ask how does a place enter into the body? Although defunct, these places are far from empty. Taking on the roles of archeologists and accidental trespassers, they encounter decomposing wheelchairs, overflowing file cabinets, singed drawings, a storehouse of surgical gloves, mimeograph schedules, and defaced murals, wandering themselves as ghosts, seeking to understand the experience of those who had been shoved to the far periphery of their society's vision. Tracing the evolution of architectural interiorities as mirror of social relations; annotations on the isolation of atypical people & the creation of ghost-spaces echoing on the margins of history...
Djalma Primordial Science focuses on three specific sites: Los Lunas, a defunct institution for those with mental and developmental disabilities which awaits its next incarnation; Fort Stanton, which has evolved from military outpost to a tuberculosis clinic to WWII internment camp to a home for the developmentally disabled to a women's penitentiary, now used as a rehab center; and Sandia Ranch, a privately run sanitorium turned home for the elderly turned illicit drug-drop & hideout for criminals, which is soon to be demolished. They seek to bring the immediate potency of the asylum sites to the viewer-- a potency that is clearly physical.   The project consists of a photo exhibit, video installation, plus an hour-long performance for body, sound, and video. Realized in Albuquerque, NM at SOL ARTS, AUGUST 27, 28, 29, 2004.

Naufragio Ballante (the dancing shipwreck)

A 12 hour site-specific performance at
THE LAND/ an art site, Inc. October 6, 2002. Dawn until darkness without interruption.

 We have been living inside our works rather than exposing them. This is why we are inside and skirted around a ditch that is rather an impression given by the earth of a watery vehicular energy. Shored up against it the wall of displaced earth that human and machinic hands layed there. A shipwreck doesn’t dance literally, moved however by the undercurrents swaying its bulk and skeletal appendages. The dance is in the moment it was frozen like a fossil in the mind at the peak of its violent death.

The sound for this performance could stem from a bio-environmental feedback loop, a kind of puppet tied to the aeolian gravity of a rusty mobile, a puppet already alive, one that turns to face the puppet master, but also one that does not challenge, one that accepts the judgement of winds and thinks of itself as more of a dissenting wind in a supreme court of winds, a crumbling down of the puppet body into the earth transmitting dissolving sparks.