After having presented his excellent show, “The perimeter of Denver» at the Center Pompidou then at 104, Vimala Pons leaves with him on tour, and releases a book-audio on the label of Rebeka Warrior, Warriorecs.The opportunity of a great interview with this Circassian, actress and scene overflowing in creativity.
We will keep the image of Vimala Pons Grimée in Angela Merkel for a long time, wearing a column of stones on her head, while removing her clothes, layer after layer, in an infinite dress waltz, before finishing naked on stage.The image expressed strength and weakness, the overflow of words and diapers, lies and artifice, truth and weight of life.Humor, too.His show, the perimeter of Denver - an expression invented by him designating "a space of uncertainty created by a lie" - is a marvel of scenic writing, abundant and yet readable, facetious and singular, destabilizing and physical.In the process, the actress, Circassian and director releases a book-audio in the form of an EP on the label of Rebeka Warrior (Mansfield.Tya, sexy sushi…), warriorecords, baptized Eusapia Klane.Her deep, “voluntarily sensual» voice, she says, narrates a surrealist story of old woman and road trip.We don't understand everything and it's very good so.
We find her in a cafe that she frequents assiduously given the familiarity with the boss, not far from the Buttes-Chaumont.Vimala Pons is a balancingist in search of imbalance to better rebalance.
In your show, the perimeter of Denver, you wear a lot of things on your head - stones, a car ... Where does this quest for balance come from?
Vimala pons- balance is a concept specific to the circus.I use the notion of balance in order to ask me philosophical questions.It is for this reason that the circus speaks from 8 to 98 years old, because it raises philosophical questions like: "Why is it falling?", "Why do I walk?"Pull the sons of these simple but fundamental questions makes it possible to wonder what the imbalance is in your own life.Lying is also rebalancing the real in what it has unsatisfactory.Emotions are internal imbalances that can be very violent.What is being mentally unbalanced?What do we wear and support in life?What is healing?What is a love, a speech?My discipline staggered towards the idea of a border carrier.We often say to the girls: "I'm going to help you wear it", but I find it great to know the weight of his desires.Wearing your suitcase to go on vacation, is to measure the weight of your desire to go on vacation precisely.
There is a Basquiat painting that marked me.These are two guys who wear a sofa and above he wrote “ideal».As if they wore their ideal ... which would be a sofa!I don't know very well what he wanted to say, but it told me a lot.It's like neuroses or obsessions.We don't always know very well why we rather want to type on a battery or blow in a saxophone.When you think about it, you see that it often corresponds to your unconscious and you try to understand why you are obsessed with that.I try to build the narration on this.These objects that the characters carry in the show also work as memories, or thoughts, such as bubbles in comics.What weight do our memories do?How should we deconstruct them to move forward?Sorry, I'm talking to 300,000 an hour, right?(Laughs)
How and when did you start bringing things to your head?
At 24, at the circus school with a bullet.Very quickly, I told myself that the abstract side of the circus apparatus was not going to help me project myself into a fiction, was not speaking enough.The abstract can be speaking, of course, but I couldn't see myself going in this direction.There is not enough off-champ.Everyday objects then arrived very quickly.As with Maguy Marin, in dance, where the accessory is a grammar.It allows you to tell things.
How do you come to wear a 28 kg car on your head?
In yoga, when you ask people to put themselves on their heads it's a bit the same thing ... You wear your weight even if, it's true, you have your hands pressed on the ground.We are very strong like that.What I practice is not a circus specialty, but a means of transport.You need less strength when you are aligned.You have to train a little, but in Asia, in Africa, there are many women who wear things in this way.There are also men, for example on the plateaus of the Andes Cordillera.
"Look at what changes in what doesn't change me sometimes cared for me.It makes me feel good.»
Do you try to get rid of the weight of memories or do they feed you?
Memories feed a lot.Even the room is full of a little autobiographical-patinated things-so that we do not recognize them as memories.The rehashing and obsession are very present in my life.With their virtue which is creation.They allow me to concentrate and exhaust a material until it draws its essence.They allow writing.The naze side is rumination.Rehearsal is not far away in our businesses.You hear the same music fifteen times, you see 40,000 times the same image in assembly, you repeat 90,000 times the same words.Look at what changes in what doesn't change me sometimes cared for me.It makes me feel good.
What are these obsessions?
There you saw a major: I need to wear things on my head.I need to be in a feeling of balance or imbalance.It’s active meditation.It calms my mental scattering.You come back to an essential thing: to keep up something.It places your breathing in the right place.I like the challenge.It’s a very strong engine, a very strong drug.I do not have the maturity of satisfying me tenuous, simple things.I am rather in the escalation of the challenge.When I discovered Anne Clark a few months ago, as well as Kate Bush's latest album, 50 Words for Snow, I spent them in the evening of the evening.I like to exhaust things.I can eat the same dish 400 times, come back all the time in the same coffee.But mentally, I scatter.You have to know where to place the frame to keep you straight.
How do you frame?
I decided that I wanted everything, all the time, with everyone, now, forever.(Laughs) The bad scattering was not to accept it.The day I agreed to want everything, all the time with everyone, it did me good.I worked that it is possible and transmitted to others.In the perimeter of Denver for example, I wanted to write a police story because there is something pop in there, in telling stories, building assumed fictions, while the contours of reality areHyper blurring at the moment ... assumed catharsis do good, the real fictional stories!I'm a fan of Colombo.I looked twice the entire series.I also wanted great physicity, I wanted music to be interpenetrated with the way of saying the text.I also wanted there to be a sculptural mode, and the movement that is not dance. Je me suis dit “je vais faire tout ça !», je voulais aussi un truc poétique, où des gens racontent des trucs de vie, comme chez un psy.I love it when, in some films, a sentence struck you in the heart and wears you for weeks.I took time to write everything by layers and then adjust.Sometimes it went wrong.At one point I understood that I would not have the police story as in the cinema where you say all in a few plans.In the theater, it is a text like that (it mimics a long text) with descriptions and didascalies.In the cinema, in five seconds, everyone understood that he had put the poison in the glass.So I told myself that I was going to do something open, with a frame, but that everyone will understand how they want and will go out with his cluedo.It is more psychedelic than a Cartesian history.In Kurosawa Rashōmon, everyone has their version.We don't know what is true or false.
You also look obsessed with lie, which is at the heart of your show.
Creating stories made us from humans.We come together on myths and symbols.It's precious and it has to do with lying and both not at all thanks to the fictional pact. L’histoire commence par “il était une fois».So we can project ourselves without fear.While in the lie, the pact is blurred.Me, I practiced the lie to rebalance places of myself that did not satisfy me, as being late.When we seduce someone, at the start we always present him the best version of ourselves, then it collapses!It is cognitive demagoguery, or seduction.You give the person what they expect from you.I thought it was still political.In love, friendship, family, politics, when someone tells you something wrong, it's very complicated ... because speech has a performative power.
Why take out this book-Audio, Eusapia Klane, who enters the world of spectacle by following one of his characters, but has his own life?
For the perimeter of Denver, I started by building objects.It was the first layer.I want to wear here and that, such as imbalance, such a thing, vary the materials, the forms.Then there was confinement.Everything has been arrested.The dust fell on it.I left with a bag.I wrote this EP who talks about this woman who loves her car but who will never go anywhere with.I did not see the connection with the show at the start.This story is inspired by Crash that I had just discovered, but also Anne Clark, Laurie Anderson and the 120,000 Carpenter films that I was revising.I was confined with Rebeka Warrior to whom I borrowed the microphone.I also bought a small Akai keyboard on the internet, and I wrote for the show but far from the reality of the set.When I came back in residence, I received the first face prosthesis, I pressed Play on the first track of this EP and I did Play-Back.I found it great to wear this old woman's face made of prosthesis, and to couple it to that voice that I wanted to be super sensual.I found that bringing voices that do not correspond to the bodies worked worked.Rebeka Warrior invited me to release him on his Warriorecords label.I didn't feel it at the start, but I did it.
“Je me déplace mais je sais où est ma place»
So you are, too, musician?
It’s good not to leave your original art.It doesn't stop me from making sound, singing, or sewing.But I want my training which is the game and the sport, the circus.You can live in other spheres, but I master the circus, not music, where I express a slightly dull level expressly.It allows me to do interesting things because it's clumsy.I know it because professional musicians are sometimes affected by what I do but because it stays there.If I wanted to progress, it would take ten years to be convincing.When multidisciplinarity arrived in the years 1970-1980, she sent walking the technique, she wanted to break this classic thing that required technique in artistic expression.Now, I make a comeback on it: I move but I know where my place is.
How did you start?
Around 18-19 years old I made history of art at the Sorbonne.I did not like it at all so I went to cinema college in Saint-Denis.I wanted to be a screenwriter, to present the femis.I wrote a short film at 18.I joined the Florent course to meet actors.What I have done.I have never derived or set up this short film, which is amazing.I have to do it.I got caught up in the game.The theoretical aspect, I found it great, but I really liked playing.My parents didn't believe it too much ... Finally, nobody wants her daughter to be an actress.My mother wanted me to be a speaker and my father like tenniswoman.I didn't want him to finance it so I went to the conservatory, then to the circus school.I knew nothing in the theater.It was a bowl.
Did you come from a creative environment?
No.My mother was interior decorator, and my father seller of computer programs.
Do you always know what you want?
Yes.I love writing everything before and then we test.It's nice for your employees when you know what you want, while staying open to the proposal. Il vaut mieux dire “ça c’est rouge» et puis ensuite “en fait c’est bleu !» Que de dire“je ne sais pas.. t’en penses quoi ?» Car au fond, ce n’est pas très grave et c’est plus vivant.
Is it confidence that allows you to materialize a proposal?Sometimes you doubt it?
Not a lot.When I doubt it is a horrible chasm and the only way to get out of it, it is the superiority complex (laughs) and the repetition.Doubt does not always build good things, it does not work with me. Je préfère tirer dans tous les sens comme dans un western et dire “nul, nul, nul, ça ok !» et avancer ainsi. Je dis beaucoup “j’essaie» puis “c’est de la merde».But it doesn't matter, I put in the trash and I try something else.
How did you meet Rebeka Warrior?
By her girlfriend, Pauline, who left us and who the album is dedicated.We both really put time in friendship.We took a long time to give our confidence ... Now it's unwavering.He’s someone extraordinary, I love him.
Are you allowing you to move forward too?
I think it's quite lonely as work.I thought of inviting her to spinning, but I have never done it.On the other hand, going to drink cafes and share the difficulty of creation, questioning, doubt, drop in confidence, working method ... Know how to surprise yourself to get the most out of oneself-same.We were going well.It helps more than entrust anecdotes.It was real support.
It’s the same with Bertrand Mandico, director with whom you have shot several times, especially in wild boys (2017), and after Blue (2022)?
We are more on exchanges of sources, films, references.Or else, we restore courage by saying that it is important to persevere when we lose faith.When you lose it it is very complicated ... It is only you who can find it, but sometimes have a coffee or a drink with an artist who shared the same pangs as you is essential.Just a sentence and you leave full of energy.I met his films first, with Tsirihaka Harrivel, at the Villa Medici, where we had our first writing residence.A resident of the villa, Elina Löwensohn (companion of Bertrand Mandico, editor's note) presented all his short films.I was laughing.I found the humor very special.Afterwards, we discussed.She told us that when Bertrand Mandico met her, he offered to make 21 films in 21 years, to seduce her.They're doing it !They make a short per year.I have always been touched by creative couples, whether brothers, friends, lover, etc..And I like the very visible realization, assuming this detachment of reality, this visual poem, very referenced.It is important because he works like a craftsman.He is the executive of his films.It’s rare to work in this way.It is not only by fetishism of an old time, it inspired me to do everything in post-synchronization, to dissociate the dialogues of the.Americans do it a lot, even at the moment.
What is it for ?
You have a second chance at the game.You can dissociate the intensity of play you have like the one you vocally.Technically, I found it exciting.There is a proximity to the voice which is very interesting and which takes off a little from this new wave inheritance which we have largely subjected to I find.There is a fetishism of an old time, that's for sure ... but who I think is a love of cinema, a moviegoer that touches me a lot.He's an incredible hard worker Bertrand.Its storyboards look like watercolors.He's a real movie manufacturer.He knows how to make movies.I love the technique, whether it is to know how to cry, or to make an overprinting of images.It's beautiful to know the tools of your art.I'm touched.I don't know why.
Maybe because there is a truth in there?Something tangible in technique, in controlling an art ...
Maybe yes.I find it hard to know.It's like that.
What is your daily music for music?
I listen to it a lot.In the morning, for 7-8 years, I have put on the Japanese ambient which allows me not to commit suicide.(laughs) a lot of classical music too.I discovered, a few years ago, that we could discover music (laughs).This is a new phase!I started looking on the internet.Before, I listened to what was happening to me, what I knew.There, suddenly, I went to meet what I did not know.I don't really like vinyls, rather CDs.I also like to listen to the radio.I listen to American, Italian, Argentine radios ... I also put a lot of DVDs that I plug into the hi-fi channel, without the image.I listen to them without looking at them.Sometimes I know films better by sound.When I see them again, I take off ... I had imagined another film!The last one was the aquatic life of Wes Anderson.I hadn't seen the film for five years, but I knew the sound by heart.I could make the door movement before the character arrives ...
And Kate Bush too, which you were talking about earlier?
This is his Fifty Words for Snow.I think it's his latest album.Piano-voice, pretty jazzy.I was quite disappointed at the beginning.It looked like a concert in an ibis style hotel hall.How strong it is ... Back to instruments!Piano with tail, violins, voice ... She makes a super long level format piece, with her super acute, very fragile voice, her voice that has aged.She writes so well.He has been wearing me since January. J’adore quand à la première écoute tu te dis “c’est nul», et en fait tu adores par la suite.
What made you want to listen to it?
Three-four agreements that gave me an emotion.And its turns!(she imitates her way of singing in the treble)
Finally, there is a certain game at home on genre stereotypes, which we find in your show.How did you become aware of the construction of the masculine/feminine?
When I was little, I had my period late.I had super-Androgynia, so I had hormonal treatment for two years in particular to guarantee that I could have children ... Before that, I was a missed boy.I didn't want to be a female girl at all.I was called young man.I had short hair, I dressed like a boy.After treatment, I became feminine in a gendered code: eyebrow hair removal, pushing hair, attitudes of seduction, rapprochement of boys.I had no feminist conscience.If my feminist conscience has happened, it is through the body.By a desire not to be helped, to be as strong as they are, that we no longer ask the question of my kind.I saw circassians do things that they were not suspected.It was thanks to the meetings that I made later that I was able to put words on this fight which has always been there unconsciously, but not at all intellectualized.The representation of women in the cinema for example ... We had a short scene in a film where we had to go over a barrier. Le réalisateur me dit:“je vais passer d’abord, ensuite je te tends la main».I refused.I could pass the barrier better than him.He justified all of this with the intrigue.With me it is intuitive feminism.It annoyed me.I didn't like what it said about the character, nor.I fought a lot for a lot of details like that.Like the way of drinking a cup of coffee.I was holding her with both hands.I am told that this is not how we drink. Des discussions entières ont suivi…On me montrait comment “une fille» boit en tenant la tasse par l’anse, avec la main bien mise.In the cinema, we take a lot of time behind the notion of character, so we can make you swallow.But as actors and actors we are very responsible for the codes that speaks.
Interview by Carole Boinet
The perimeter of Denver, on March 22, 23, 24 in Nantes (the unique place), on March 30, 31 in Brussels (Halles de Schaerbeek), April 8 in Val-de-Reuil, Festival Spring (Théâtre de l 'Arsenal), April 13, 14 in Annecy (Bonlieu), May 5, 6 in La Rochelle (La Coursive) and the 17, 18, 20, 21 in Grenoble (MC2)
Eusapia Klane (Warriorecords/Kythibong)
