Le Balcon

Pedro Garcia Velasquez
Initio

Choreography Tatiana Julien

Text Alexandre Salcède

Initio is a scenic and musical piece for two singers, six musicians, five dancers, a conductor and a chamber choir, all brought to life through dance.

The piece draws on the tradition of opera, moving it towards a poetic reverie, towards a less univocal meaning. Audiences read the poetic images we present as metaphors, completing the meaning with their own words; some see in them political demands, others religious, or even the sublimation of an exodus.

The written text - the libretto - is not of primary importance. There is a “word” in the bodies and in the music, which the text colours. The musicians, singers and dancers are all on equal footing, and are all on stage together.

We wanted to write a beginning. The passage of beings between the underground, introspection, formlessness and the articulated world. We wanted to exorcise violence. We wanted to write the sweetness and beauty of an intimate, existential despair: a quest for a place or a metaphysical meaning. We sometimes thought of the wind in the pines, the suspension of things and the origins of the show. We wrote a ritualistic feast, a profane, ignorant ritual. We declaimed a beginning, giving a community of beings, represented by a community of artists, to see and hear.