Funeral lament, prayer for the rest of the body and the soul, the Requiem evokes a possible place between flesh and consciousness, the projection of the being towards the unknown. How could one seize this ambiguous celebration today – lamentation and shout of revolt, quest of reassurance and rite of insubordination? How could it be reinvested with its subversive power in order to sculpt a “corps-requiem”, mix of tumult and reassurance, fascination and horror?

Accompanied with the guitarist Marc Sens, Magali Milian and Romuald Luydlin seized the requiem as a formal exercise to be dislocated and a potential to be reactivated. Adopting its insistence and its repetition, they made of it a rite of passage in chiaroscuro: an intermediate zone in which some buried dimensions of the body can be stretched, simultaneous states of intensity, suspension, immobility and break points can be investigated. On the horizon of this research, the enigma of the resting state – paradoxical situation which is neither peace, nor death, nor the sleep, but resistance to the flow: indissoluble presence and refusal.

Working on the verge of different genres, Requiem works as an organization of materials in tension: from vocal cords singing, accentuating the text, to the guitar’s string scrubbed, strucked or brushed; muscles holding the limbs to the cables supporting the body as an offering or a mutilated victim – every element seems ready to fall over all the time.

Striking the stage to force their way through, the two interpreters cloud possible leads and roles; alternatively narrator and passive, unanimated silhouettes or presiding a strange ceremony, they play the double dimension of the passage: body crossing through and making a way.
In echo to Casey’s text, the music of Marc Sens – full of noise, metallic screeching and of melodic impulses – becomes orchestra and percussion, whip which streaks the body or murmurs which caresses it.
The continuous stretching and twisting of the flesh produces images – a recumbent lifeless, an embrace – the double figures of Eros and Thanatos singing together. Forever
Gilles Amalvi

choreography: Magali Milian and Romuald Luydlin
with: Magali Milian, Romuald Luydlin, Marc Sens
guitars: Marc Sens
light creation: Pascale Bongiovanni
direction and sound control: Valérie Leroux
sculptor: Anne Leray
texts: Casey
translation: Simona Polvani
production: Compagnie La Zampa
co-production: Théâtre de Nîmes, Scène Nationale d’Albi, Fabbrica Europa

La Zampa is supported by Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication/Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles Midi-Pyrénées, Région Midi-Pyrénées, Conseil Général de l’Ariège and City of Pamiers.

Creation residencies
DSN-Dieppe Scène Nationale, Scène Nationale d’Albi,
Ville de Tournefeuille, Teatro Metastasio di Prato,
La Ferme du Buisson Scène Nationale de Marne-la-Vallée

Within the tournée in Italy, the show has benefited from the support of the Institut français.

The show is realized in the framework of the project “Focus on Art and Science in the Performing Arts” with the support of Culture Programme of the European Commission.

Requiem is part of the events of Festival d’Europa.