Along with his Compagnie 111, Aurélien Bory has gained a reputation as a poet of space and a wizard of staging; an artist capable of blending elements of dance, music, magic and circus in his visual theatre.
Created from the comparison with Species of Space – Espèces d’espace by Georges Perec, Espæce (note the overlapping of the two terms that make up the title of the book) is therefore the natural continuation of this artistic path. With acrobat Guilhem Benoit, dancer Mathieu Desseigne Ravel, contortionist Katell Le Brenn, opera singer Claire Lafilliatre and actor Olivier Martin Salvan, Bory has composed a real tribute to the French writer – who was orphaned at a tender age following the death of his father in war and his mother’s deportation to Auschwitz – in a jigsaw puzzle of faded memories, allusions, voids and absences.
If the theatrical scene is used here to replace the paper pages that make up the famous text, then the hyperbolic language games of Perec are returned through the manipulation of all of its mathematical tools. A new vision machine capable of creating irony, emotion and wonder, or a poetic journey through the many landscapes of our existence.
