La Ménagère

Info

Pixelation. Temporary interruptions and errors. We’ve all experienced an unexpected explosion of jagged, pixelated, hallucinatory lines spread across computer screens. A digital error fractures the image we are looking at and, for a frustrating moment, interrupts the movie, game, or photo we are watching. Before returning to normal, everything turns into pieces that short-circuit the visual plane and, in a way, call into question the forms and traditions. But what happens when digital techniques meet performance and intersect with the concreteness of body matter?

In a space with black and white tiles, which reminds us of a kitchen, stands a woman, a housewife, dressed in a yellow overcoat. The sounds of a sponge scratching and a vacuum cleaner, compose the alienating soundtrack of the piece. The dialogue between movement and sound unlock the inner world of the character. Quoting the author Sheila Rowbotham in Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World, La Ménagère explores the “neurosis of nothingness” as an outcome of the women’s lock down into a dissolving cyclical process, filling up to emptiness.

La Ménagère is the second part of Rebecca Journo’s diptych L’Épouse & La Ménagère, two solo pieces that portray archetypal feminine figures to raise questions about the space in between fantasies, performance and the so-called reality. As in glitch art, the obsolescence of such representations inspires the choreographic language to search for the ‘system error’.

Rebecca Journo is a dancer and choreographer based in Paris.Through her practice, she explores a choreographic language in which movement strives to materialize the bond between body, imagination and sound. 
Graduated from the Trinity Laban Conservatory in London in July 2015, Journo has performed in various projects in Switzerland, Belgium and France, with companies and artists such as Brokentalkers, Konzert theater Bern, Tabea Martin and Michele Murray. In 2018, together with  Véronique Lemonnier she founded the company La Pieuvre. Their artistic line of work sits at the collaborating edge of dance, performance, music, and photography.
With La Pieuvre, Journo has created the pieces L’Épouse (2018), La Ménagère (2019) and Whales (2020). Through a fine line between writing and improvising, Journo has crafted a personal approach to choreography exploring movement at a micro level to invite the viewer inside the lived body.
Journo has been working closely with the platform for emerging choreographers Danse Dense since 2018, she also received the support of Les Petites Scènes Ouvertes in 2019 as well as funds for emerging talents in the Île-de-France region (FORTE) in 2020. In 2021, Rebecca Journo is starting the research and production of Portrait (working title), a quartet which will premiere in 2022.