Mim’provisation

Started in June, 2010, Mim’provisation grew out of the personal necessities of mime artists to improvise and challenge themselves and their craft. While contact improvisations, improvisational theatre, and breakdance battles already exist; Mim’provisation fills a gap and breathes fresh light air to the universe of physical expression. On this stage of corporeal improvisation, the intensity of a battle in front of a very critical audience results in poetic construction and unique expression. Rather than virtuosic performance measures, improvisational play focuses more on how the imaginary springs to life.

We are living in a post-modern era of mime where the original modern masters like Etienne Decroux, Marcel Marceau, Jacques Lecoq, and Henryk Tomaszewski have passed away, and where the art of mime has evolved into budding interdisciplinary variations such as mime-dance, clown mime, abstract mime, and physical theatre. Mim’provisation offers an encounter for today’s vast array of artists and their unique forms, personalities, and talent to come together to witness, share and play together. And through this live challenge and dialogue, a more heightened level of beauty and creative surprise blooms.

For the unsuspecting audience, Mim’provisation will awaken the imagination and touch the soul from laughter to amazement. Witnessing some of the best mime artists, they participate in the process of evolution of the contemporary mime that yearns to redefine itself beyond the dominant stereotype of the “white-masked pantomime”.

The event takes place in two parts:

In the first part, a group of selected or “invited” mime artists demonstrate their skills. They are guided by an invited master of ceremony.

In the second part, the public become the actors and are invited to improvise, in duo, trios according to a given theme.

Our Partners :

Cie Mangano-Massip

L’akuarium

Cie Mime de Rien

Comme Vous Emoi

www.silencecommunity.com

Théâtre du Mouvement

Théâtre Diagonale

From a spectator’s perspective

The excellent initiative of the companies Pas de Dieux, Autour du Mime and Mime de Rien played to a full house on June 17, 2010 at the Akuarium. It is in a very hospitable atmosphere (thanks to the talent of the host of the venue, Maxime Nourrisat) that the professionals were thrown into the fray of a corporeal improvisation in front of a watching audience. Grouped in three hats, the themes, the rules of play, and the number of mimes and musicians on stage, are drawn by chance by the members of the audience. Orchestrated rigorously with the utmost simplicity and with a huge generosity, the mimes, who come from all parts of France, present themselves to the joy of the audience both novices and experts alike. The first part is consecrated to professionals to kick off a rich show of movement supported musically to the extent of supplanting the corporeal conflicts of visual and sound dialogues between actors –and muscians.

The second part, open to amateurs of all ages, were not only nourished by themes emanating from the public but were mixed with the professional mimes and musicians of the first part. Pas de Dieux and Autour du Mime have succeeded, at the Akuarium, in creating a magnificent intergenerational overture that crosses the practices of many horizons well beyond the chapel arguments of the summer.

-Etienne Bonduelle, Centre de Nouveau Mime, Lettres d’information n°43 – 44

Credits:

Poster: Pierre-Yves Massip

Photos: Jemina Boraccino, Stéphan Piera, Guisy Pignotti