Press Reviews

It was after a tour in Japan and Vietnam that Tréhet felt the necessity to choreograph the strong impressions he received during his contact with the Far East. As with a lot of Westerners, the Asian culture was a real shock for him. He was struck and charmed by the totally different behaviour of the people on all occasions, their reactions, their rapport with nature, time, life, the sacred. The traditional performances that he saw in the two countries touched him deeply, as much by their artistic approach as the way the dancers used their bodies. For him, the title “Le Jardin du Silence”* evokes a cemetery, “a poetic way of referring to that place but without gloomy implications. It is a work about sensations where we try to make the people feel the tropical heat and the monsoon, with parts of the choreography somewhat inspired by traditional dances and their rites.” This garden is also inhabited by ghosts, the dancers wearing conical, fringed hats that shadow their faces and transform them into mysterious creatures like those of the beyond. In a rather slow rhythm, to a music composed largely of real recorded sounds, sounds of nature, the voices of Vietnamese children singing, they move about in a framework, non narrative, but still evocative of the whole of this world. This electroacoustic sound track is produced by Jean-Jacques Schmidley and the few pieces of instrumental music that punctuates it have been written by Romain Ponsot. A symbolic place, out of time, this garden is a kind of haven, suitable for meditation, on the fringe of the noisy civilisation, whose echoes manage to penetrate the silence of the garden. Without the desire to convey a social or political message, this piece is, above all, a meditation, very discreet, very gentle, on that which can be gained by the discoveries of the differences between civilizations. * The Garden of Silence Gérard Mannoni A work that calls for contemplation (...) The figures follow one another, the movements executed on a slow rhythm (…) The rhythm of the one who takes the time to simply listen to the silence of the other (...) Also in this “Jardin du Silence”*, there is no place for brisk, jerky and very rhythmical movements used so frequently, too frequently without a doubt, in contemporary dance. For Philippe Tréhet is above all a poet… Wilfrid Joly To go into the centre of a town, is to meet the social “truth” and to participate in the magnificent fullness of the “reality”. Roland Barthes The time is suspended. The rhythm of the dancers is very slow. The chirping music (…) The audience is left to be taken over by the sacred dimension of the performance (…) The atmosphere is exotic, the choreography is contemporary (…) The dancers are remarkable. As for the décor, representing cones, it leaves a clear course for the purity of the emotions (…) A rare moment… * The Garden of Silence Gérard Mannoni