IN SHORT ⟶ An eclectic and distorted cabaret where Antonia Baehr & Latifa Laâbissi mix their powerful expressive universes with a contagious imagination inside a huge cardboard box: the ephemeral architecture of set designer Nadia Lauro is halfway between a fairytale house and a design object.
Antonia Baehr & Latifa Laâbissi – among the most long-standing artists on the international performance scene – follow up their unclassifiable performance Consul and Meshie with a new duet. Cavaliers Impurs (Troubled Riders) is a cabaret that takes place in a giant cardboard box, featuring a series of eclectic sequences, all tied together by a common thread: an impure, hybrid collage.
Two bodies of different shapes and sizes, two diverse distillations of images and references, both tested via physical and vocal intensity. Mixing their respective vocabularies of facial expression and disguise with multiple expressive registers, the two artists intertwine their universes through sequences that disrupt choreographic codes and blur boundaries.
Part fairytale house, part design object, the giant box by set designer Nadia Lauro is an ephemeral architecture that serves as a refuge, a platform, or a podium for the two figures, that are summoned to the stage to be assembled and dismantled: the bodies of the protagonists examine this debris while redeploying postures, sampling symbols, singing subverted hymns, and distorting stories.
Antonia Baehr & Latifa Laâbissi will hold a workshop within the RECIPROCITY section entitled Collaging the Impure.
⚠ The performance on Sept. 6 has unfortunately been canceled due to technical problems, not dependent on the festival or the company. The ticket cost (excluding presale and commission) can be refunded exclusively at the Pelanda box office from today until Sept. 12. For any information please write to info@shorttheatre.org. We apologize for the inconvenience!
Antonia Baehr is a performer, video maker, choreographer and visual artist. She seeks to look behind the facade of performance within daily life and the facade of theatre itself, working on the margins of everything that characterizes us as human beings – positioning herself to sensually swing through various critical positions. In addition to choreographic elements, she is interested in the rules and laws that society (and theatre space) assign to bodies, to make them recognizable and understandable. She collaborates with Neo Hülcker, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Andrea Neumann, Latifa Laâbissi, Jule Flierl, and others interested in exchanging roles. Lately, she has been working on collaborative duets. Baehr is also the producer for dancer Werner Hirsch, the musician and choreographer Henri Gelar, and the composer and performer Henry Wilde.
Latifa Laâbissi is a choreographer and performer who mixes genres and redefines formats: her creations bring different off-stage/off-field elements to the stage, channelling different characters and voices. Since 2011 she has been the artistic director of the Extension Sauvage Arts, education and pedagogical festival program in rural Brittany. In 2016 Editions Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers and Les presses du réel published a monograph of her work. She has duetted with Antonia Baehr, Manon de Boer and Marcelo Evelin. In 2022, she created Fugitive Archives for the CCN Ballet de Lorraine. She and Antonia Baehr presented previews for MOVE 2021 at the Centre Pompidou. This performance is the starting point for Cavaliers Impurs, a new creation first presented in autumn 2023 at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin and the Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes, where she has been an associated artist since 2021.
Nadia Lauro is a set designer and visual artist active in different contexts such as scenic space, landscape architecture and museums. She has designed sets, environments and visual installations with high dramaturgical power, capable of generating new ways of seeing and being together. Nadia Lauro has collaborated with internationally renowned choreographers and performers: Vera Mantero, Benoît Lachambre, Frans Poesltra, Martin Belanger, Ami Garmon, Barbara Kraus, Emmanuelle Huynh, Fanny de Chaillé, Alain Buffard, Antonija Livingstone, Latifa Laabissi, Jonathan Capdevielle, Laéticia Dosh, Zeena Parkins, Antonia Baehr, Yasmine Hugonnet, Marion Siéfert, Kate MacIntosh as well as with Jennifer Lacey with whom she has left her mark on numerous projects. For her installation $Shot (Lacey/Lauro/Parkins/Cornell) she received the New York Dance and Performance Award (The Bessie). She has worked on installations and performances for museums, theatres and galleries in Europe, the USA, Japan and Korea.
concept and performance Antonia Baehr & Latifa Laâbissi
music and sound design Carola Caggiano
concept and realization visual installation Nadia Lauro
realization visual installation Marie Maresca, Charlotte Wallet
light design Eduardo Abdala
vocal coach Dalila Khatir
figures Antonia Baehr, Latifa Laâbissi, Nadia Lauro
internship Esteban Capron, Suet Wa Tam, Johan Boyer
production Alexandra Wellensiek (make up productions), Fanny Virelizier & Damien Krempf
(figure project)
coproduction HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin (DE) / Le TNB – Centre européen théâtral et
chorégraphique, Rennes (FR) / National choreographic center of Caen in Normandy, within
the framework of „Accueil-studio“ / Ministry of Culture and Communication (FR) / Festival
d’Automne, Paris (FR) / Fonds Transfabrik, a German-French Fund for Performing
Arts (DE/FR)
funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin and the Senate Department for Culture and
Community, Berlin and the French Ministry of Culture, DRAC Brittany
with the support of la Ménagerie de Verre, Paris, dans le cadre du Studiolab &
Theaterhaus Berlin
thank you to Wolfgang Müller, Yves-Noël Genod, Bettina Knaup, Maja Zimmermann, Dan Belasco-Rogers, Javier Blanco Núñez, Gilles Amalvi
the dates in Rome are funded by NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, finanziato da Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media
and by Fondazione Nuovi Mecenati – Fondazione franco-italiana di sostegno alla creazione contemporanea
ph. Anja Weber
