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Es2029
De la poésie des chips
Sarah Devaux / Cie Menteuses [Be]
Performative archive and reflection process
“There is the grand feeling, grief, a love that begins again, but there is also the packet of crisps, the guy who comes to read the meter… the dirty dishes in the sink… If there are no crisps, in my opinion poetry dies.” (Victor Pouchet, writer and poet, heard on the radio)
De la poésie des chips is first and foremost a text fragmented into dates, themes and titles. Somewhere between diary, essay and poetry. Today, this text becomes a working basis for hybridising with a performative, physical and embodied form of writing.
The words archive, intimate, political and poetry dance around in my head. Through live writing, dance, video and theatre, I would like to find a way to make them coexist. To try to stage a “self” that opens onto existential, political, kinaesthetic and affective dimensions, where the countless modes of existence that inhabit us unfold simultaneously. I attempt to dissect my body, my brain, my psyche, in front of you, for you (and for myself too), illuminating my blind spots with the flashlight of philosophy, poetry, linguistics…
It revolves around a hole, an absence, and the presence of absence.
I track down the smallest nooks and crannies, to anatomise them live. Every means is fair game, as long as unconscious flows circulate between us, branch out, and bring something shared into being.
Credits
Conception, writing and co-direction Sarah Devaux With Sarah Devaux Production & administration Myriam Chekhemani – La chouette diffusion Production & booking Siham Berrada & Lova Randrianasolo – La chouette diffusion Residencies Belgium’s Libitum Support Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles
The company
Menteuses [Be]
Menteuses is a Belgian company working in the field of performing arts. It was founded in 2015 by Sarah Devaux and Célia Casagrande-Pouchet after graduating from ESAC (École Supérieure des Arts du Cirque de Bruxelles), to produce their first work, À Nos Fantômes, in 2018. Today, Cie Menteuses supports Sarah’s artistic projects.
Sarah Devaux
“My professional practice began with rope work (ESAC 2011–2014). Today, I prefer to speak of suspension practice (a term introduced by Chloé Moglia) and of a relationship to verticality. I am looking for something beyond the physical practice itself, something that can enter into dialogue with metaphysical and philosophical concepts. In this sense, I have developed a very valuable ongoing collaboration with Mélissa Von Vépy across various projects. Together, we explore and deepen a research into the dramaturgy of the body through a metaphorical language and a singular, physically grounded theatrical universe, where scenography carries meaning and opens up new paths of research around the verticality and suspension that are at the heart of our practice.
Today, my work is becoming increasingly hybrid, and increasingly close to the ground. My encounter with Nadia Vadori-Gauthier marked a turning point in my practice. In 2023, I trained in her dance and performance method, Corps Sismographe®, and today I devote my artistic practice to different media that I refer to as physico-poetic. The body remains central and is still the raw material of my research, but within broader modes of activity: a physical, theatrical, imaginary, thinking, still, dancing, speaking body…
At the same time, I have immersed myself in writing, opening up a space for autofiction, thought and poetry, and I seek to bring these different media into dialogue with philosophical concepts in order to set a research dynamic in motion. Today, the question that drives me most is the search for a particular relationship to the present—one that involves taking a risk with oneself in real time, through relationship, instant composition and live writing, and that can unfold within a performative framework.”
Alongside her own creations, Sarah collaborates with various directors and choreographers, working across a broad and hybrid spectrum encompassing circus, theatre and dance (Valérie Dubourg, Damien Droin – Cie Hors Surface, Camille Châtelain – Cie L’Indécente, Mélissa Von Vépy, Pascal Crochet, Sébastien Barberon).
