Jokes are irrelevant with Michel Schweizer, contemporary choreographer. As soon as one enters the espace Malraux in Chambéry, where he shows Scan, the audience is tended to by crew members. The VIPS, gathered in the waiting room, enjoy local wines. Then they are guided, via the stage, to the room already filled with the non-VIPS. The show can start. It is quite disconcerting and profoundly nihilist. Everything is filled by commercial strategies, multiple deal. None of the values that represents art is spared. There are no actors, dancers, stage managers or choreographers but service providers gathered in La Coma, profit center. They are at the service of the audience member that has to leave some of his/her habits at the door.

Man without quality

Good, beauty, emotion, technique, achievement, virtuosity, all of these words are no longer relevant on a stage constantly filled with people with no qualities. Work, politics, criticism are mixed without trickery. Michel Schweizer is a formidable manager that choses his providers for their investment in the project.

The idea is not to inject reality, to bring the outside in the theater. La Coma displays its reality, at work for an hour and a half.

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Scan lies at the border of cynicism, desolation, vacuity, with a quote by Jean-Pierre Cometti: « Art and culture have become (institutionally and politically) lures that act the part of politics. Consensus rules that world. » The new festival Art’tension full of stimulating fun pieces, could not dream of a better opening.

Marie-Christine Vernay