Company l'Yeuse / Incontri

How does the individual adapt to conflict? What gives birth to conflict, what do we make of this special, close relationship, which involves a very real sharing of intimacy...

Desiring to decipher the absurdities of the human race, we focused our attention on this occasion on the theme of confrontation, taking as our starting point the more or less intimate and concrete case of a face-to-face encounter between two people across a table.

A first In-contro (from the Italian in, meaning in or with, and contro, meaning against or counter to, suggesting an English title: Encounter) was produced, with this short work forming the initial piece of a mini-series, Incontri (Encounters), which always begins with two people at a table, clashing in minor events of varying duration.

These small pieces represented the opening salvo of a project exploring the dialectic of conflict, which in turn led to the work Tournois (Tournament), featuring seven performers in a strategic dance about the concept of failure, the defeat of another or others, and even the situation itself being or becoming a failure.

Everything here is in an absurd and inappropriate tone: the playful side of a face-to-face can reveal the violence with a smile. They move and bounce in this space of games and challenges, mimicry and ulterior motives, power relations of “one step forward and one step back,” drawing up rules of a peculiar proximity. It is the invisible and the essential aspects of human relationships at their deepest, most animalistic, levels, the defense of territory, the basic expressions of submission – that are embodied by several gestures, in a universal language.