Abysses

Scraps of hemp rope salvaged from backstage in a theatre form a 60-meter-long braid. The rope is the element that creates a link between reality and fiction, but also a dialogue between audience and performer. The performer uses it both as a prop and hypnosis tool: audience members are invited to slide it between their fingers and pass it to their neighbour as soon as she arrives onstage. The rope introduces the idea of collective consciousness, connecting the audience.

The rope awakens the senses and concentrates their energy. Like a relational object, it carries the sensory memory of those who touched it. Direct contact with the skin allows for a link between material and flesh – touch thus holds an important role in the perception of the rope. In this sense, it is a vector of the imaginary. This contact also allows us to create a mental image of the rope, to understand where the points of tension, support, release, and restraint are. Each knot participates in creating a tactile journey, a narrative path accompanying the performer’s voice.

“Jeanne Colin has, since 2017, undertaken research into the links between movement and the subconscious, combining different approaches with her tools: dance, hypnosis and drawing. In Abysses, she focuses on dreams and paradoxical sleep – an experience of rest inhabited mainly by nightmares and fear – to pursue this exploration. Working the tensions between reality and fiction, feeling and imaginary, Colin begins the piece with a conference before allowing the body and senses to drift towards a liberated dance. Playing physically and metaphorically with ropes, knots and vines, Abysses links what is buried and disunited.”