CHRISTIAN UBL, THE CARNIVAL SEASON

Christian Ubl, The fifth season, Chateauvallon-Liberté, January 28, 2022

The Dance Dance Dance Festival! is organized by the National Scene Chateauvallon Liberté in January-February in Toulon. It allows you to discover the effervescence and diversity of choreographic creation in the Var and Bouches-du-Rhône.

The fourth of the eight shows on offer, La Cinquième Saison is a piece for seven dancers, a DJ, an opera singer, a videographer and a masked audience.

From the start, the dancers play with the (double!) masked audience by filming it and projecting its image on the screen in the background. The projected image and live music contribute to the impression of immersion. On stage the dancers, often close, communicate and take us into the whirlwind of the party in a sort of ritual and procession. The masks blur reality and distort our perception, just like the large transparent plastic sheets behind which the dancers come to play; both curtain and distorting prism.

The spectator finds in The Fifth Season the characteristic features of the carnival: excess, exuberance, fantasy, license, vitality, the mask, the colors, the sharing and the participative aspect, as well as the notion of representation. , from what I am given to see. The choreographer lets us wonder about the greats of this world whose masks then give way to clown masks.

© Laurent Philippe

The different scenes of a modern and revisited carnival follow one another. A beautiful immersion in the party!

Back in pictures by Stephane Barré