© Isabelle Françaix
Projects
La voix du Trait
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The world’s awe-inspiring beauty alongside its horrific
violence — humanity has always searched for ways to
understand this paradox. Here, from the depths of a
primordial universe emerges a hidden meaning — a meaning built from letters, sculpted by the visual and sonic rhythms of the calligrapher’s gestures, extending from generation to generation through their symbolic values.
In La Voix du Trait, calligrapher Frank Lalou invites us into his workshop, drawing letters and spiraling shapes. The rhythm of Lalou’s gestures is projected live, while the sound of his pen on paper is amplified. The audience is invited into worlds both real and virtual, both acoustic and electronic, for a unique experience in the turbulent solitude of the calligrapher, onstage together with the musicians. Throughout, Oren Boneh’s music traverses the dizzying space between the noise all around us and the quiet rituals that give shape to chaos.
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15.03.24 Espace Senghor, Brussels (première)
04.05.24 La Boverie, Liège (festival Images Sonores)
Vortex Temporum
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Ensemble Fractales performs Gérard Grisey's masterpiece from the spectral movement, Vortex Temporum, accompanied by live painting by artist Dimitri Bardunov. The piece is made up of three movements, each presenting its own time-scale: the measured time of humans, the super-slow time of whales, and the frenetically rapid time of insects.
Using the surfaces around the musicians in the hall as his playground, Dimitri Bardunov will animate Fractales’ performance of Vortex Temporum by painting improvised organic forms along with the music, inspired by the three time-scales of the piece.
Antigone in the Dark
with Rita Matos Alves, soprano Lorenzo Caròla, librettist Mathieu Collard, mise en scène François d'Alcamo, images Rose Alenne, costumes Manuela Rastaldi, choreography Stéphane Orlando, composition and direction
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"Where were you, Creon?” This heartbreaking cry of Antigone, addressed to King Creon shortly before finishing his life locked in a cave, still resonates today. Where was he? Where was the Authority when Antigone’s younger brothers massacred each other? Why didn’t he try to defuse the conflict, to promote prevention over repression?
Pierrot Lunaire
by Arnold Schoenberg
with Sarah Defrise, soprano
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Ironic, both tender and grotesque, influenced by cabaret songs, Schoenberg composed his Pierrot Lunaire around texts by the Belgian symbolist poet
Albert Giraud. The work marks the invention of Sprechgesang (spoken-sung declamation), and is one of the first atonal works. His original instrumentation went on to have a great impact on 20th-century chamber-music composition.
Kaze to Arashi
by David Achenberg
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Achenberg’s original score FURARI slowly opens and then gradually dissolves, accompanying Rambalac’s video of a stroll through modern Tokyo. A powerful and fragile vision of Japan’s immutable energy.
ECO RICERCATA
Shot in 2021 at Dada Studios for Le Senghor, supported by Céline Rallet, with ensemble Fractales: Gian Ponte, Renata Kambarova, Diego Amaral Coutinho, Marion Borgel and Benjamin Maneyrol.
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Music by Denis Bosse is given an additional dimension through the video of Isabelle Françaix and the lighting by Thomas François. With the electronic participation of Xavier Meeus from the Centre Henri Pousseur and the support of Lorenzo Caròla from the Forum de la Création Musicale.
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