Falling silently > Festival in situ

Lyrical Tragedy
Élise Dabrowski

Created from sound and visual archives collected online, Fall Without a Sound is freely inspired by the industrial and social drama of a major French group, a leader in apparel: Vivarte.
In the early 2000s, it was a giant with around twenty brands (La Halle, André, ...) and employed more than 20,000 people. Twenty years later, the Group is liquidated, and its last employees are laid off amid general indifference.
On stage, employees and executives converse with a chorus of loudspeakers installed in ready-to-wear mannequins and replay the echoes of a downfall foretold, blending their voices with electronics and the trombone, a new aulos that harks back to the earliest days of ancient tragedy.

Cast
The employee Angèle Chemin
The CEOs, one voice Vincent Vantyghem
The coryphaeus Élise Dabrowski
Trombone and an employee Christiane Bopp
Electronics and an employee Eric Broitmann
Recorded voices Camille Merckx, Aurore Bouston

Directed by Jean-Benoît Nison
Sound Anaïs Georgel
Lighting Gildas Goujet
Set design Franck Jamin

Composition Élise Dabrowski
Composition and live electronics Eric Broitmann
Co-composition Christiane Boop

Libretto based on an original idea by Antoine Veyronnet and texts by former employees and executives of the Vivarte group, by Élise Dabrowski and Sophocles.

This performance was created on December 17, 2024 at the POP - artistic and civic incubator.
Production TREPAK.
Co-production: La Pop - artistic and civic incubator / La Muse en Circuit, National Center for Musical Creation - Alfortville / Césaré, National Center for Musical Creation - Reims / Théâtre de Cornouaille, national stage in Quimper / the Abbey of Noirlac.
Support and residency hosting: Théâtre de Vanves - state-supported venue of national interest "Art and creation" for dance and contemporary writing across the arts.
Thanks to the Dior Museum in Granville for the donation of the mannequins.
This project received creation funding from the Val-de-Marne Department, support from the SACD Lyric Creation Fund, creation funding for a musical production from SPEDIDAM, dissemination support from ADAMI, and creation-production-dissemination support from the National Music Center.
TREPAK is supported under agreement by DRAC Île-de-France.
Élise Dabrowski is an associate composer at La Pop during the 24-25 and 25-26 seasons as part of the DGCA-SACEM scheme

Photo © Romain AL