Superstition Festival Postponed
A letter from Enrique Pardo
Pantheatre's Myth and Theatre Festival is adjourned to 2021: we must all take the time of care and confinement to face and ward off the coronavirus PANdemic - wishing Pan would not do this to us. At some point we will have to ask him why… At present, we postpone the festival, not without heartbreak - but we also and resolutely invite you to think of the postponement as a prolongation, as an extended prolegomenon: yes, we have one extra year to prepare what is turning out to be the most challenging theme yet in terms of what I must call artistic anthropology.
How to prepare during this confinement time, how to broaden our thinking on Superstition? I will share a book that has been my thinking companion these days. But first, allow me a personal note: I contracted the coronavirus - fortunately without grave symptoms, and have now recovered. Touch wood !
The book (in Italian), curated by Jungian analysts and friends, Riccardo Mondo and Luigi Turinese, is titled: Caro Hillman (Dear Hillman) - 2004. It compiles 25 short articles by leading Italian Jungian analysts, each with a question to James Hillman, who answers each one with a few paragraphs, brilliantly and strictly to the point. The questions are elaborate, mostly friendly, some guarded, all with a hard-nut-to-crack question. A couple are fiercely antagonistic.
I will only address here the links between this book and superstition. The contributors write from a psychotherapeutic point of view and use clinical references and values. One interesting point: many refer to the Puer Aeternus, the eternal child 'archetype', presented as a compliment to Hillman's insightful genius and eloquence, when meant positively. When negative, the implication is that Hillman was a great mythopoetic rhetorician, but not scientifically nor clinically accountable or responsible.
These charges emerged first in the 1960s, when Hillman was named the first director of studies of the Zurich C.G. Jung Institute. He resigned in 1969. Later, in the early 1980s, when we started corresponding, there was a clear and animated "sympathy" between him and the younger artist that I was: his ideas, I wrote, were essential to contemporary artistic thinking, especially the status he gave to image, imagination, dreams and narratives. In 1964, he had given his first keynote lecture at the prestigious Eranos Conferences, in Ascona, Switzerland, titled: On Psychological Creativity. Its emphasis was on the artistic nature of psychoanalysis and on "the poetic basis of mind", and it warned against a one-sided 'senex' dominance in analysis, based on scientific and clinical models.
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It should be clear that my turn towards a rehabilitation of superstition as a blueprint vision and method for artistic performance is in line with James Hillman's early stands. It echoes his thinking, precisely, "On Psychological Creativity", which I consider the foundation (or at least the first priority) of performance engagement, and generally of artistic endeavor.
As mentioned in the pre-coronavirus Editorial, superstition (re)opens and sharpens perception and the patterns of inspiration; it stirs and renews the motives, modes and motors of acting and acting out, it emboldens risk, but also precaution and inclusivity. We must working out new or updated definitions.
To close this prolegomenon announcement, a complex equation from German philosopher Markus Gabriel: "When will we finally understand that, compared to our superstition that contemporary problems can be solved by science and technology, the highly dangerous coronavirus is innocuous?" (Article in El País, titled: The world order prior to the virus was lethal.)
Here is my slant on Gabriel's "superstition": artists have a crucial role to play in the search and application of alternative forms of knowledge and spirituality - which is where I call on superstition, as a tool, a method, an attitude, a knowledge, towards radical performative creativity, and, similarly to Gabriel's overall stand, resolutely avantgarde, ethically and politically. Right now, for sure, we need all that science and technology can give us, and fast.
Prolegomena notes - towards June 2021.
1. Our festival's title brings together Myth and Theatre, i.e. theory and practice. Preparations for 2021 will include online conferences and interviews, but also live and archive laboratory work and critical analysis.
2. I will also comment performances, starting with two recent ones, by Swiss performer Julia Perazzini, and Brazilian dancer Volmir Cordeiro - and keep reformulating why superstition affords me, today, the most resourceful weltanschauung for critical appreciation and "psychological creativity".
3. The next Paris season should start in October, with regular classes and two professional workshops - and a program of international video seminars and master classes. |
EDITORIAL
Enrique Pardo
"Superstition as a performance take: both alert and cautious, highly perceptive, and shrewd in gaging and engaging with signs. Its outcome: sagacious moves and canny risks.
Superstition is the first psycho-semantic filter of perception: a landing platform for poetic connections and serendipities, a gate, open to premonitions, daemons and quirky moves.
A way of letting the spirits in: INSPIRATION. It steers the performer's intuition towards insight and figuring out images or, at least, how to gamble on making sense." EP |
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THE WORK THE TEACHERS
click for details
| Enrique Pardo |
Choreographic Theatre & Voice Performance - morning sessions preceeded by warm-ups. |
| Linda Wise |
Voice : Singing and Acting - with guest musicians - afternoon classes and groups. |
| Teachers |
A circle of collaborators teach voice, singing, rythm, dance, acting and movement techniques. |
| Lectures |
Keynote lectures, talks, video presentations, films, related to Superstition (fingers crossed.) |
| Debates |
Being on site allows for lots of dialogues, round tables, and parties. |
| Performances |
Performances, concerts and work in progress presentations |
| Malérargues |
A pastoral paradise with 6 studios and pianos everywhere. Book early for lodging. |
INFORMATION / REGISTRATION / PRICES / LODGING
BELOW |
| Directors & Planning |
Enrique Pardo : Choreographic Theatre
Mornings : laboratory sessions with the contribution of different teachers and invited musicians. |
Linda Wise : Voice Performance
Afteroons : Voice work in two periods : work all together, division in two or three groups with different teachers for individual work. |
PLANNING
Mornings and afternoons are dedicated to PRACTICE - classes, laboratories and master classes - under the overall direction of Enrique Pardo and Linda Wise with a large circle of collaborators.
Evenings are dedicated to performances, concerts, lectures.
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9:30 - 10:15 |
Mouvement and voice training |
10:30 - 13:00 |
Enrique Pardo - laboratory sessions |
14:30 - 17:30 |
Linda Wise - master classes and small group coaching |
evenings |
lectures, debates, performances |
Arrivals Monday June 21 or June 26. Departures Monday June 29 or July 6.
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| Information & Registration |
INFORMATION & REGISTRATION
New policy : coming to the festival at Malérargues is quite an investment for many artists and students - and we want them there. So we offer substantial bona fide discounts, and also donor's fee (last year's full fee.) Pantheatre also accepts donations.
| Fees |
2 weeks |
1 week |
| Donor Fee |
950 € |
500 € |
| Full Fee |
750 € |
400 € |
| Bona fide & in training |
600 € |
350 € |
| Active members |
400 € |
300 € |
Registration :
Registration to the Myth and Theatre Festival is done directly through PANTHEATRE (and not through the Roy Hart Centre's registration form.)
Email to PANTHEATRE. Include a brief CV and a letter of motivation if you have not worked with Pantheatre.
Confirmation - Deposit : if your request is accepted, your place will be reserved. It will be confirmed on reception of a deposit of 200€ to “Pantheatre".
Deposits can be returned up to one month before starting day, with a 50€ administration costs deduction.
Payment - see: http://www.pantheatre.com/pdf/payments.pdf |
Lodging - Important to book soonest. The Roy Hart Centre has lodging for 20 persons which fill very quickly. Check the Roy Hart Centre information page
Contact-us for other possibilities, including shared rentals. Or shared travel.
Check the Camping Filament (20 minutes walk). We checked it and it is fine, especially bungalows in calm green areas, and very convenient, with a swimming pool - it is not at all full before July 15 full season.
If you check AirBnB or similar, check for : Thoiras area, or nearby Lasalle - post codes 30140 30460. (You might need to have or share a car for this.)
Travel - Best access is via NIMES train station + bus to Thoiras Gare (at the back of the station, buse 112), Let us know your arrival time (and mobile N°): we will come fetch you, 10 minutes by car).
Nîmes station. Train from Paris (3 hours),from Marseille Airport (1h30 hours). Or Barcelona (4 hours).
check http://www.pantheatre.com/pdf/buses-trains.pdf
and information on the Roy Hart Centre site |
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Teachers / Lecturers / Guest Artist
2019 Références to be updated |
| Enrique Pardo |
Director, focusing this year on theatre and divination, a take that ranges from pre-socratic shamanism to neoplatonism to contemporary re-assesments of ecology and of magic (including Cubism - as in Cuba). |
| Linda Wise |
Artistic co-director, actress, voice and singing teacher, very drawn to Brasil for its music and singers... "mainly because of Africa" (she was born in Kenya). |
| Paris Laboratory |
Enrique's 2016/2017 Paris Laboratory included two strong references: the role of the Background Vocalists (voices that know better), and texts by Giulia Sissa from her book on Jealousy. |
| Anna Griève |
Writer, has lectured with Pantheatre on fairy tales, and performed in The Twelve Brothers by the Bothers Grimm. This year she will present and analyse the story of Melusine. |
| Amy Rome |
Professor at Central Lancashire University, singer, PhD and Pantheatre collaborator, with a background spanning from rock and Atlantic City to Heidegger and phenomenology. |
| Pierre-François Blanchard |
Pianist, composer, performer. Travelling musician with Raphaël Humbert, and fortunate to have been the accompanist of the great, and recently departed, Pierre Barouh. |
| Daniela Garcia |
Actress, movement and voice teacher, Parisian from Chile. She will present a sybillic solo recomposition of her two performances with Pantheatre - and an awesome oracle : The Black Box. Friday June 22 at 19:00 |
| Michaëlla Gallozzi |
Actress and clown teacher - working on a performance including Count Dracula and his pagan library. Member of the Paris Laboratory. |
| Didier Monge |
Musician, composer, sound-engineer and producer - and webmaster. Assistant musical director of the Paris Laboratory. |
| Véronique Taconet |
Performer, vocalist, was part of Pantheatre's Alchemical Theatre project (early 1990s) making a comeback now that her son is a star student at the Geneva dance school. |
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