Object of the residency: recording and composing

Lyrical and choreographic performance

"Hidden in the thickness of the forests, Echo's voice always answers the voice that calls her, but no one can see this unfortunate Nymph." Ovid, Metamorphoses. 

When Narcissus calls Echo, she can only repeat the last words of the man she loves. The weary young man abandons the nymph. Narcissus finally falls in love with his own reflection in the water, and dies of his passion. Echo remains alone in this space, where the silence around her takes over. This is where our performance begins, in a world of silence.

Echo wanders for a long time. To escape her pain, she tries to walk, to grasp, to see, to hear and to say again: one step after another, one breath after another, one sound after another.
Reduced to a primitive state, Echo re-experiences, like a child, the sounds of the world. She chews them, and by dint of eating them and experimenting with them in her own flesh, she gives them a new consistency. The sounds, and their echoes, permeate her body, giving it life. By dint of being unfolded, repeated, transformed and accumulated, the sounds become words, then phrases, and finally songs.

It is through the rediscovery and re-appropriation of sounds that Echo overcomes the repetition of which she was a prisoner, and is able to utter them freely. Initially truncated, her sentences become increasingly full. As Écho's words unfold in space, so does her bodily metamorphosis. She is no longer frozen or reduced to snatches of phrases, but becomes a whole being (full-fledged), a being that speaks.

Écho is a vocal, visual and bodily performance for soprano. The composition is for one voice, then repeated and superimposed, becoming polyphony. The transformation of the solitary song into a polyphonic voice represents the emancipation of the character, who must seek out new voices to relearn language. Working with choreographer Thierry Thieü Niang, who will accompany the stage movement, will add a bodily dimension to the performance, adding another layer of emotion and narrative. 

Mentions
Biographie(s)
Echo
Jimmy Boury
Residence
Mon. 18 -- Fri. 22 September 2023
Distribution

Jimmy Boury
design and direction

Jimmy Boury, Emmanuelle Jakubek
composition

Emmanuelle Jakubek
vocals

Thierry Thieû Niang
choreography

Charlotte Gautier van Tour, Jimmy Boury
set design

To listen

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