Archaic, visceral, violent… is how one could describe this “story” that has been told a million times. Out with narration. We prefer vivisection by scalpel of the childish fable and its entrails! A wolf, half animal, half serial killer and Little Red Riding Hood in her complicit innocence embark on a duet of fascination, games and fear. On a bare stage (a concrete and dreamlike space) and accompanied by a sound universe of tinkered vinyl records, childhood is confronted with its fantasies and fears with force and jubilation. The stark narration of the original fable uses resources, costumes and lighting sparingly, leaving only muscle, heavy breathing and laughter to defuse this choreographic-explosive device.

Between depravity and abuse, and returning to an oral tradition that is harsher than our childhood memories suggest, Rotkäppchen (“Little Red Riding Hood” in the Teutonic forests) dismembers, mangles and tears apart the motive for the murder at work in this bygone tale. In a piece of loving writing about vertigo and flesh, Sylvain Huc choreographs the primitive convulsions and the cadaveric stiffness of an unhealthy duo. A wolf aesthete of his maniacal crimes and little red riding hood in glory or in agony cross paths. Wise and wild, the bodies of this story interact with the throbbing or inert flesh in a “butcher’s piece”.

Following Beethoven and his heroic symphony, Kaputt asserts itself as an act of bravery destined to fail. “Eroica”, with its cuts, bursts, bombardments and ceasefires… But also, its enthusiasm. Rather than disillusion, Kaputt talks about the art of voluntary wrecking and the heroism of failure. This is perhaps all that bodies can still claim as ambition, as a possession: to exhaust themselves… to what they are incapable of, to support an impossible symphony or to succeed in a performance. How then does the body fail? Heroic as it is vain, the loss of the body is cultivated more than having it. It will be taught not to know. Kaputt is a rescue by failure. A pointless act of necessary bravery.

Even though “gender” constitutes a political challenge more than ever, how can we take another look at the male body and masculinity? Boys don’t cry sidesteps exposed stereotypes ad nauseum. Constantly displayed as a heroic model or as an object of desire, the male body is confronted with a void of representation. Boys don’t cry engages in a physical deconstruction of testosterone, its fictions and its performances. The only weapons that are used are a martial drum kit and two male bodies that will experience the paradox of dance between power and fragility. The figures of today’s virile man will be explored through physical exertion to reduce them to crumbs and see them (perhaps) appear anew.