Following on from Villon d’après la ballade des pendus (2015) and L’Oeil de Polyphème (2017), this is the third creation by the Rennes-based company. It is first-and-foremost a remarkable encounter between poetry and dance, father and son, young and old, and between two bodies inhabited by their arts. Actor and director André Layus teams up with dancer Bboy Rasco (Oscar Lassus dit Layus), from the Dyptik company in Saint-Étienne, whose D-Construction et le Mirage (Un jour de fête) made a lasting impression on the festival. To create this moving tableau around seven poems by Cécile Coulon, Olivier Cadiot, Andrée Chedid, Jules Supervielle, Samuel Beckett, Ghérasim Luca and Arthur Rimbaud, they focused on the values expressed in Akira Kurosawa’s film, Seven Samurai.

This is the story of fighting to strike a balance between values and actions, the passage of time and the perpetual struggle for freedom. It is a battle under construction and reconstruction, expressed through the relationship between these two bodies and between them and public space. Through listening, adaptation, mobility and the experience of street performance and outdoor theatre, this is about “blending into the background” in the movement of bodies and the words of poets, in order to reinvent a relationship with urban space and others. It is a surprising and thrilling journey, bringing together a Japanese filmmaker, hip-hop dance and poetical text.