Performance chronology

With

Eric Domeneghetty
Cendrine Gallezot
Françoise Leick
Jörg Müller
Antje Schur
Karim Sebbar
Bernard Thiry
Mark Tompkins
Régine Westenhoeffer

Set realised with the assistance of Philippe Poirier and Susanna Hanke
Music recorded with the participation of musicians Philippe Aubry, Vincent Peter
and the students of the Conservatoire National de Région de Strasbourg: Marie Braun, Frédéric Guérin,
Claire-Emmanuelle Herrbach, Fabrice Kieffer, Hélène Schwartz

Premiered june 7, 2000
  for the Strasbourg Danse Résidence

Durée 1h10

REMIXAMOR is an experience of singularity, of the individual in the heart of the group, and not about the collectivity. It is a creation, more than any other, fashioned out of everyone’s lives and the lives of each one in his own introspection and his ability to remove the mask. It’s the nakedness of their intimate self that interests me. “MIX”, “REMIX” are the reflections of a carefully structured work, and this is true for the dance as well as for the music or stage design. Each protagonist creates with autonomy, then, with the same set of instructions, perspectives and points of view, joins together in movement the possibilities for putting the proposals together. Here, self love is not romantic. It is respect and personal searching on the part of the dancer. And the spectator who during the representation participates in the game of giving, ceases to be just a voyeur and becomes an active witness to his own point of view.

Mark Tompkins

... The Fayoum portraits confront us with faces which gaze at us as if from a neutral place that would neither be death, nor life, and they do it from a very distant past which almost miraculously touches our present. Absolutely suspended, delirious messagers, they are there, in this closeness that occurs only rarely : to see a face close up and for a few minutes to probe it, examine it, enjoy its appearence, enjoy the manner that its appearance approaches the most radical and mysterious difference, this is where we find an experience which, even though tied to daily life, is isolated into a certain substantiality, which is that of intimacy or love.
The figure of a singular face is in effect like an imprint of singularity itself : the singularity of each face, The singularity that there had been or not all these faces, and that each time, each one was or had been the unique, the last, the only one to be that way, travelling through life with this face, and then sent to death in the same form.

Extract from “L’Apostrophe muette - Essai sur les portraits du Fayoum”,
Jean-Christophe Bailly - Edition Hazan, Paris, 1997

PRESS EXTRACTS

"For once, lets start by naming the bold performers of Mark Tompkins new show Remixamor, which must be one of the choreographers most extravagant and offbeat productions ever: Eric Domeneghetty, Cendrine Gallezot, FranÁoise Leick, Jörg Müller, Antje Schur, Karim Sebbar, Bernard Thiry and Régine Westenhoeffer. Eight people of very different appearance and so different from what one would expect dancers to look like. Eight dispositions modelled to be daring without fear or inhibitions: a bikini with rolls of fat, kitsch, nudity and hysteria...Mark Tompkins resolutely takes us to the brink, much more so than in previous plays, just to sound out the limits of being. His dancers rush headlong into this exercise in revelation, gaily bounding through the suntanned scene in Pompeii, the Greco-Roman sketch in sexy togas, and not forgetting the Rite of Spring suddenly remodelled to its bare essentials, or carnal duos that are as daring as they are intriguing. You need to have a strong stomach to digest such a radical aesthetic experience. So we digest it, and we even let ourselves be caught up in the heroic beauty of this play that proudly proclaims it has no style but has what it takes.

Le Monde, february 15, 2001, Rosita Boisseau

 
"With this production, Tompkins has made a “carpe diem” statement that is in turn melancholic and jubilant, using performers who are first and foremost strong characters... What Tompkins is trying to capture is the feeling of being, ones frailty when faced with death, the strengths and weaknesses of the flesh, the adventure of life that is both unique and banal... Tompkins cannot stay serious for long, and this is what gives makes his choreography so graceful and pleasing. RemiXamor is chanted and declaimed with moments of physical exultation, interspersed with meditative moments of calm that offset the pure energy of carnal presence, a reminder of time passing and all things passing away. The present is constantly being "remixed"..."

La Croix, february 13, 2001, Annie Suquet

 
"… After the questions of intimacy and collectivity, themes that have haunted him for a long time, the theme of sharing is increasingly apparent in his work. Wherever Tompkins ends up he brings together new personalities from all walks of life to work to a totally new project. After three years in Strasbourg in a residential programme where Tompkins and the IDA company more than fulfilled their pledge, Remixamor stands as an emotional farewell to this ephemeral adventure."

Libération, february 8, 2001, Maïa Bouteillet

 
" RemiXamor is a real remix with its patchwork of allusions. Is this a love story? This is an unresolved matter, brushed aside by the madness of some and the lack of interest of the others. It is funny, lively, something of a turn-of-the-century operetta revamped in 3rd millennium style. That notwithstanding, the finishing touch of this play has to be the pure pang of sadness sparked off by an unexpected moment of darkness and the choreographer (who moreover sings the song remarkably) singing Leo Ferré.. The intimacy is never fully revealed, and Tompkins knows how to stay discreet with regard to emotion. The loose frivolity of it all may verge on the indecent, with individuals being swallowed up in the masses, or going off on a grotesque tangent... the fact remains that suddenly he is alone, silent and lovingly helpless."

Danser, april 2001, Agnès Izrine

 
"They are nice blokes, these bawling louts turning up in shorts, flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts in an incredibly kitsch setting somewhere between the pyramids and a Venetian palazzo. These tour-operator adventurers, with their torches and sunglasses, go into raptures over the patchwork of museum exhibits from Italy, Egypt and maybe even Greece. Little by little the atmosphere changes. A more intimate tone is set, and the energy more internalized. Duos break out of the group scenes. They are caught in moments of intimacy relating to their bodies, and we discover all the complexities of their relations with others. Podgy or stocky, too tall or too thin, with their commonplace looks in their tight bathing costumes, they nevertheless give off a vague eroticism that is lost in their gaping solitude. They lose themselves in the pleasures of vaporous leisure and the sweet drift of the senses into the sweaty heat of desire. A man passes in the night. It’s Mark Tompkins. He sings Léo Ferré. Avec le temps va tout s'en va… It is both funny and pathetic, cruel and tender. The music becomes distorted, the movements more frenzied, the body neuroses and piercing solitude of the heart are revealed. A cacophony of obsessions flies off into an imaginary fantasy world. One gets carried away in a fiendish solo, fighting her own demons in a mighty combat. Then our jolly fellows on a spree again, a little more elated and ever more tipsy. They must let themselves go in this exhilarating party..."

Les Saisons de la Danse, april 2001, Gwenola David

 
“...Dressed up by Reiser, alphabetized by Professor Choron, loaded up with all the perfect tourist accessories ; cell phone, Polaroid, bermuda shorts or bathing suits in tropical colors, they pillage the relics of authentic heritage. Vulgar colonizing barbarians. There is chattering, a mix of laughs and burps, ugly swear words, non stop thick humor, you can smell the stench of bad taste for miles around, it goes around and comes back in one big conga line : it’s frighteningly real. You laugh so hard you cry. And in front of this mirror of thickening pain, before turning the page of what seems to be and might be mistaken for an ordinary comic book vision of popular culture, we understand that we have just been drawn into a “trompe l’oeil” illusion. An encounter with Tompkins, who turns this cruise up the Nile into a shipwreck on the shores of nihilism...RemiXamor is awesome but pathetic.

DNA, june 9, 2000, G.Cazenove