Arrêts de jeu (or Game over)

Arrêts de jeu stages a memory. A memory whose both collective and personal. A childhood memory. In 1982, the French football team met the FRG in the semi-finals of the world cup head in Sevilla. Getting to this stage (...)

Arrêts de jeu (or Game over)

Arrêts de jeu stages a memory. A memory whose both collective and personal. A childhood memory. In 1982, the French football team met the FRG in the semi-finals of the world cup head in Sevilla. Getting to this stage of the competition was in itself a real achievement for this team who was a long way from being a favorite. The dream of getting to the final could only be done by an improbable achievement against the rigorous and disciplined, physically agressive and superior German ogre. The French team only had the audacious and risky imagination of its frail and enthusiastic players to put forward. The scenario of this game still lingers in the memories of the children we were at that time. Battiston falls into a coma, after being assaulted by the goalkeeper Schumacher. The referee unjustly refuses a goal by Rocheteau. Platini, Giresse, Tigana, Térsor are heroes. They stand up to their opponents. 3-1 for the French in the extra time. The Germans equalise a few seconds before the end. The penalty shoot out is never ending, unbearable. Maxime Bossis fails his penalty. To be on the verge of an exploit and then fail. Unjustly fail. The FRG steals victory from the crushed French players. The team and all their supporters, of which I was a part at nine years old, were filled with a huge and inconsolable deception.
Besides the crucial sporting stake, this match obviously also held an implicit political issue. The ancestral tensions between the two countries were brought out to the surface and were being expressed in a disguised way. The second world war, even if no one dared say so, was still floating in our minds. Sport, often rallying people, can also act as a catalysis for myths, fantasies and clichés. It was the case on that evening of July 1982.
The theatrical and graphic choreography “celebration”, of this sports event whose drama is so astonishing, brings forward through ritual and commemoration the collective and intimate mythologies that construct our memories. Both solemn and absurd, sacred and ridiculous, this ceremony evokes the pleasures, the stakes and the paradoxes of childhood through the exploration of the “game” in the wide sens. The bodies are images, faces, toys, joys, anguishes, dreams and than nightmares. The bodies are sometimes stupid, sometimes solemn, sometimes absurde, sometimes discerning, sometimes agile, sometimes clumsy. After all, this “regressive” manifestation of these memories enable me to observe my current posture as an adult and apprehend, maybe with some fear, my next memories.
Pierre Rigal

 Produced by the compagnie dernière minute
 Coproduced by TNT - Théâtre national de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, Théâtre de la Ville - Paris, Arcadi (Action régionale pour la création artistique et la diffusion en Ile-de-France)
 With the support of DRAC Midi-Pyrénées, DICREAM, ADAMI, the Conseil général of the Haute-Garonne, City of Toulouse, AFAT Voyages et Repérages
 Thanks to the CDC Centre de développement chorégraphique Midi-Pyrénées, Gare aux artistes de Montrabé, Centre national de la danse en Rhône-Alpes, FIFA

Compagnie dernière minute is subsidised by the Ministry of Culture & Communication/ Préfecture of region Midi-Pyrénées, Region Midi-Pyrénées and City of Toulouse.

Archive sources : Séville 82 France-Allemagne, le match du siècle de Pierre-Louis Basse. Ed. Privé

Pierre Rigal / Aurélien Bory

With
Benoît Canteteau, Elena Borghese,
Itamar Glucksmann or Pierre Cartonnet, Pierre Rigal

Conception & choreography
Pierre Rigal

Directing
Aurélien Bory, Pierre Rigal

Music
Joan Cambon, Sylvain Chauveau

Lighting & video design
Aurélien Bory, George Dyson, Pierre Rigal

Costume design
Sylvie Marcucci

Assistant choreographer & production
Sophie Schneider

Length 55 minutes

Created on the 3rd Octobrer 2006 at the Théâtre national de Toulouse with Grégory Edelein, Alain Lelouch, Elena Borghese, Pierre Rigal then the show toured from 2009 to 2011 with Lionel About, Damien Bernard, Elena Borghese, Pierre Rigal

98
performances
since

 

 

98
performances
since

 

Diary