SANS

sans
Duration: 52 minutes

Choreography : Martine Pisani
Performers : Theo Kooijman, Laurent Pichaud, Olivier Schram
Texts : Theo Kooijman, Daniil Harms
Costumes : La compagnie du solitaire
Administration & booking : Lien Juttet
This performance was created in April 2000 at fabrik Potsdam (D)
Produced by La compagnie du solitaire
Coproduced by fabrik Potsdam (D) and La compagnie du solitaire.
Additional support from ADAMI, Vivat/Armentières (F) and CND/Paris (F).
The company is supported by DRAC Ile de France - Ministère de la culture et de la communication.

sans is simply based on the dancers presence on an empty and silent stage. Focusing on modes of transition, this piece plays with notions of abrupt changes.
Going from one situation to the next, accumulating contradictory moods, feelings and movements.
It could be about building a sequence of abrupt changes ...

What we are looking for is a way of "being" in a performance space where performers and audience face each other, when play behaviours are favoured rather than psychology or theatricality.
How much is true and how much is fake? How much is natural and how much is acting ?
Martine Pisani

“ From the point of view of form, play can be defined as a free act, experienced as fictive and located outside of everyday life, yet able to totally absorb the player; an action devoid of any material interest or utility; its temporal and spatial scope is expressly bounded, it takes place methodically according to specific rules, and kindles relationships among groups that deliberately shroud themselves in mystery or emphasize, through disguise, their strangeness vis-à-vis the commonplace world. ”
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens – Essay on the social function of play

Martine Pisani, where she happens to be
Going to the essentials. Highlighting quality of presence rather than resorting to artifices of representation. Coming up with concrete actions onstage. Juxtaposing them. Interrelating them while making sure they stay meaningful… Subtly and unassumingly, Martine Pisani has affirmed a unique posture and language, matched with genuine poetics of dance.
Martine Pisani lives and works in Paris.
In 1992 she starts her own company and creates the pieces : Fragments tirés du sommeil (trio 30’-1992), U-Nighted (duo 15’-1993), Le grand combat (solo 20’-1993), Là où nous sommes (quatuor 30‘-1995), L’air d’aller (trio 50’-1998), sans (trio 50’-2000), Ce que je regarde me regarde (duo 26’-2001), Slow down (sextuor 65’-2002), Bande à part (sextuor 65’-2004), Contre Bande (solo with a chorus of amateurs 50’-2005), o please tell me (solo 30’-2006), Hors sujet ou le bel ici (trio 55’-2007), Road Along Untitled Moments (performance 40’-2007)

Press review
Rather than developing a narrative structure, Pisani simply sets her dancers to interact with each other and with the space: play behaviours dominate this performance, in fact, much to the audience’s delight. From the moment the men enter the stage space in street clothes and one breaks the stillness by covering his eyes with one hand while executing a comical series of hops and turns, we are hooked. Whether tossed off or carefully executed, every nuance of expression and gesture draws us in: a hand flung into the air; a head cocked sideways, inquisitively; a foot shaken loosely as if to detach it from the body; a dancer stopping to stand, stare at us, and groan.
Lea Marshall in Ballet Dance magazine - 2005

A Life on Lease
sans is the name of the small performance. Sans means without and the three male performers were quite without music, scenography, without any appliances - and apparently also without any dance technique or choreography to lean on. Are they making fun of us, is this really dance?
In all its naked simplicity, Sans is a refined deconstruction of what dance really is. First and foremost it has a very special spontaneity as when humans dance with themselves, give themselves completely to the movement without a thought for other’s eyes. It is funny, touching and in all its vulnerability preciously authentical. A secret moment.
Monna Dithmer in Politiken – 2001