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Dance : Camille Mutel

Music : « Two couples » Karlheinz Stockhausen
Light design : Brice Durand

 

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The Seal of Kali is based on the short film by the Kays brothers, 'In Absentia', by reinterpreting the piece by Stockhausen entitled 'Two couples'. It is a piece in which waiting and loneliness gradually turn into madness. Sex becomes the focus of attention, a monstrous demand for love exhibited ostentatiously, almost aggressively.

 

“…(The Seal of Kali), borrowing the hubris of butoh rather than the written word - dives into the unveiling of sex. Because a surprise never comes alone, there was an addition to the program, if one may say: an exceptional solo by a young contemporary dancer, based in Nancy, Camille Mutel. Without being butoh strictly speaking, The Seal of Kali has an intensity and an outrageous charge. The girl wears a camisole of canvas, under a single lamp. She twists, reverses, reverses again, constantly reversing and in a startling reversal ends on all fours, upside-down. Rising from the depths and towards our origins, she unveils the world, beardless in the hollow of her thighs. This is an indecency such that the young woman hides her face in her nightgown so as not to see our faces. Her sex and our fear ... Then she moves on her knees in provocation, overlaps, reverses again and back in a terrified modesty that her previous unveiling renders screaming with sexuality: ‘the unfortunate girl, remaining naked, was in a terrible state’ (1), but here she had even dressed herself in it. They say that to flee the devil, women had to show him her sex, this unveiling was stronger than that of the gaze of Medusa. Will leave you in a state of petrification.”

(1) Georges Bataille. Histoire de l’œil. Roman et Récit, édition La Pléiade, p59. »
Philippe Verrièle, Webthéa, lundi 07 novembre 2005