Performers & Creative team
Created and directed by Michèle Anne de Mey, Jaco Van Dormael and the Kiss & Cry Collective
Text Thomas Gunzig
Creative team Grégory Grosjean, Thomas Gunzig, Julien Lambert, Sylvie Olivé, Nicolas Olivier,
and with the participation of Thomas Beni, Gladys Brookfield Hampson, Boris Cekevda, Gabriella Iacono, Aurélie Leporcq, Bruno Olivier,
Stefano Serra Story Michèle Anne de Mey, Jaco Van Dormael, Thomas Gunzig
Cinematography Jaco Van Dormael, Julien Lambert
Choreography Michèle Anne de Mey, Grégory Grosjean
Dancers Grégory Grosjean, Gabriella Iacono, Manuela Rastaldi
Image Julien Lambert with Aurélie Leporcq
Set design Sylvie Olivé with François Roux, Juliette Fassin, Théodore Brisset, Brigitte Baudet, Daniella Zorrozua
Set construction Jean-François Pierlot (Feu, Métal), Walter Gonzales (Triline)
Lighting designer Nicolas Olivier with Bruno Olivier
Sound designer Boris Cekevda
Cold Blood (London)
Performers Manuela Rastaldi, Denis Robert, Nora Alberdi, Ivan Fox, Stefano Serra, Jaco Van Dormael/Harry Cleven
Image Juliette Van Dormael, Aurélie Leporcq
Light Yann Hoogstoel
Sound Boris Cekevda
Photography Julien Lambert
Technical director Thomas Dobruszkès
Voiceover Toby Regbo
Text translator Gladys Brookfield Hampson
Producer Hélène Dubois
Creator's note
A plane journey, a forest in the fog, seven unexpected deaths…
Cold Blood takes a poetic yet pragmatic look at death and its often arbitrary nature. With a certain lightness, life celebrates its final moments of happiness and memories file past, at times languid, at others more vibrant. Each vignette features a different passing, some mundane and some downright bizarre but all equally final. Existence stands still for a dance. When death arrives it is absurd, often trivial and sometimes comical.
We challenged ourselves to make a feature-length film on a kitchen table with a cast of dancing hands. But unlike a regular film the script was written at the end, once we had experimented with improvisation and suggestions from all members of the group. When the script was in place, we pulled together all the visuals. Yes it is cinema but it is also much more. There is dance, but also more than dance. It is like a pop-up film in which the camera films things which are too small to be seen by the naked eye and the eye sees what the camera does not capture. It’s a show which appeals to all five senses. When people take their last breath they expect to see their lives flash before them but this is not what happens. There is only one final image which takes them by surprise… the softness of skin on an afternoon which smells of vanilla, the noise of the sheep you are shearing, the smell of freshly cut grass at the height of summer… when the end comes we do not know it is the end.
Michèle Anne de Mey and Jaco Van Dormael
Discover
Watch: London International Mime Festival 2020
For 2020, the 44th year of London’s annual festival of contemporary visual theatre, 10 overseas companies join 8 British groups, including 4 LIMF co-commissioned productions.
Biographies
Michèle Anne de Mey is a Belgian dancer and choreographer. She attended Mudra, the Brussels-based school founded by Maurice Béjart, from 1976 to 1979. She choreographed her first show, Passé Simple, in 1981. Giving Belgian dance a new direction, she followed this up with the duets Ballatum (1984) and Face a Face (1986). In 1983 she had become one of the four founding members of Rosas dance company, for which she worked for six years devising and staging several works for Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, including Fase (1982), Rosas danst Rosas (1983), Elena’s Aria (1984) and Ottone, Ottone (1988). Although always focusing on the connection between dance and music, her choreography has a strong dramatic content, placing the dancer in a specific and innovative relationship between stage and audience. In 1990 she set up her own company, Astragale, producing some thirty shows that have enjoyed international success. In 2005 she became joint director of Charleroi-Danse at the Centre Chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
In 2011, together with director/filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael and a group of colleagues, she co-devised Kiss & Cry at the Festival VIA, bringing together film, dance, text and theatre. This show became a worldwide success and has twice featured at the Barbican as part of London International Mime Festival. With the same team she co-created Cold Blood at Le Manège de Mons, or the context of Mons – European City of Culture 2015. She subsequently stepped down from her post as director of Charleroi Danse and restarted her own company. Its first production, Amor, was a solo for Michèle Anne in which she conveyed her own, intimate, near-death experiences.
Jaco Van Dormael is a Belgian director, writer and filmmaker, perhaps best known for the movies Toto the Hero (1991), Le Huitième Jour (1996), Mr. Nobody (2009) and The Brand New Testament (2015). At birth, he had nearly been strangled by his umbilical cord and received an insufficient supply of oxygen. It was feared that he might end up mentally impaired and this trauma may partly account for the recurring themes in his films which often explore the worlds of people with mental and physical disabilities. He studied film at INSAS in Brussels and later at the Louis Lumière College in Paris. In 1995, he took part in the Lumière et Compagnie project, an anthology of very short films (on average 50-60 seconds) contributed by international directors in which each used the original Auguste and Louis Lumière's motion picture camera to film their short movie. In 1998 he was a jury member at the 51st Cannes Film Festival, and in the same year participated in the Spotlights on a Massacre project – 10 Films Against 100 Million Antipersonnel Land Mines, a collection of short films that served as an anti-land mine campaign.
Van Dormael's feature debut Toto The Hero about a man who believes his life was stolen from him when he was switched at birth, won Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and numerous other awards as well as a BAFTA nomination. Le Huitième Jour won Best Actor Award at Cannes for Pascal Duquenne and Daniel Auteuil jointly. All his films contain surreal elements and make prominent use of nostalgic, popular music standards. Typically, they end with a death, portrayed not as a tragedy, but as a happy ‘moving on’. Jaco Van Dormael and Michèle Anne de Mey are husband and wife.
Plan your visit
Meet friends, grab a drink, drop in to one of the free installations on Level G before the show - here's what else is happening at the Barbican when you visit.
London International Mime Festival
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
+44 (0)20 7637 5661 [email protected] www.mimelondon.com
London International Mime Festival (LIMF) promotes contemporary visual theatre. Its productions have been nominated for and won Olivier Awards, and in 2017 the festival was honoured with the Empty Space - Peter Brook Special Achievement Award for its work over four decades. Founded in 1977, LIMF is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.
Festival Directors Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig
Production Manager Bill Deverson
Artists Manager Stephanie Brotchie
Press Representatives Anna Arthur PR [email protected]
Graphics & Website Iain Lanyon keanlanyon.com
Marketing Consultants Anne Dillow, Richard Fitzmaurice mobius industries.com
London International Mime Festival 2020 gratefully acknowledges co-operation / financial support from: Arts Council England; Institut français as part of its En Scène programme; Arts Queensland; Arts South Australia; Cheryl Henson; Jim Henson Foundation
