GIMME A BREAK !!! (2023) - Baptiste Cazaux

GIMME A BREAK!!! is a quest for catharsis. Borrowing from the vocabulary of rave music, meditative practices and headbanging, Baptiste Cazaux continues his research into emotional peace and detachment, which he sees as a survival strategy in the face of capitalism. In a duet with loudspeakers, the choreographer composes a deregulated space-time, full of complexities and contradictions, in search of a vital and necessary impulse.

After EXERCICE DE STYLES # 2 (2019) and perfect pitch (2021), GIMME A BREAK!!! is Baptiste Cazaux’ third personal project. The premiere series took place from 6 till 9 September 2023 at La Bâtie - Festival de Genève (L’Abri, CH).

In January 2024, Baptiste participated in the platform CANAL 2024 organised by CN D - Centre national de la Danse (Pantin), at the invitation of CCN de Grenoble. Watch here the interview (10 min).

UPCOMING DATES

  • 28.06.2024 | Le Grütli, Genève (CH)

  • 05.07.2024 | Festival de la Cité, Lausanne (CH)

  • 06.07.2024 | Festival de la Cité, Lausanne (CH)

  • July 2024 | Santarcangelo Festival, Santarcangelo (IT)

  • 23.08.2024 | BMotion, OperaEstate, Bassano del Grappa (IT)

  • 15.09.2024 | Forte Marghera, Venezia (IT)

  • 07.12.2024 | CN D - Centre national de la Danse, Paris (FR)

  • 24.01.2025 | Festival Trente Trente, TnBA, Bordeaux (FR)

  • 25.01.2025 | Festival Trente Trente, TnBA, Bordeaux (FR)

PREVIOUS DATES

  • 21.03.2023 | Danse Dense, La Briqueterie CDCN, Paris (FR) - Showing (PRO)

  • 07.04.2023 | Centre national de la Danse - CN D, Lyon (FR) - Showing (PRO)

  • 06.09.2023 | La Bâtie - Festival de Genève, L’Abri, Genève (CH) - PREMIERE

  • 07.09.2023 | La Bâtie - Festival de Genève, L’Abri, Genève (CH)

  • 08.09.2023 | La Bâtie - Festival de Genève, L’Abri, Genève (CH)

  • 09.09.2023 | La Bâtie - Festival de Genève, L’Abri, Genève (CH)

  • 08.12.2023 | Festival Danse Dense, Théâtre Berthelot, Paris (FR)

  • 26.01.2024 | CANAL (pro), CN D- Centre national de la Danse, Paris (FR)

  • 05.03.2024 | Les Printemps de Sévelin, Théâtre Sévelin 36, Lausanne (CH)

  • 06.03.2024 | Les Printemps de Sévelin, Théâtre Sévelin 36, Lausanne (CH)

  • 19.03.2024 | + de Genres, KLAP Maison pour la Danse, Marseille (FR)

  • 06.04.2024 | Happy Days, Pôle-Sud CDCN, Strasbourg (FR)

 

GIMME A BREAK !!! - a project by Baptiste Cazaux (45’, 2023)

Concept, choreography and performance: Baptiste Cazaux Music: Être Peintre Artistic assistant: Lisa Laurent Sound: Gaspard Perdrisat Light: Justine Bouillet Dramaturgy: Johanna Hilari Administration/Production/Swiss Distribution: Yamina Pilli – Ohlala production International Distribution: Rue Branly – Quentin Legrand

Production: HONEYHONEYDANCEDANCE Coproduction: La Bâtie - Festival de Genève, L’Abri, Théâtre Sévelin 36, KLAP Maison pour la danse Supports: Accompanied by CN D - Centre national de la danse (Lyon), Residency support in the frame of programme Danse & Dramatugie: Sudpol Luzern, ROXY Birsfelden, Réseau Grand Luxe (2021-2022), Société Suisse des Auteurs (SSA), Pro Helvetia, Ernst Göhner Stiftung Acknowledgements: Pascal Neyron, Marc Streit, Pauline Coquart

photos © Morgan Carlier Van Elsande, Nelson Schaub

Just the title and the three exclamation points that conclude it set the tone of Baptiste Cazaux's piece. GIMME A BREAK!!! resonates like an emergency in a busy and fast-paced daily life. With this solo, which draws on the sounds of raves but also meditative techniques and headbanging – a style of dance with very violent gyrations of the head –, Baptiste Cazaux stages his desire to abandon in a capitalist world which is always rushing further away. Having trained in classical dance, then performing at the Geneva Ballet, he collaborated with the choreographers Jan Martens, Ayelen Parolin and Katerina Andreou, while creating his own pieces. Be careful, warns the choreographer, who dialogues in the room with loudspeakers: the show is played to very loud music and includes stroboscopic effects.
- Rosita Boisseau, Télérama, 28.11.23

[ Portrait ] Trained in classical dance, Baptiste Cazaux nevertheless prefers rave to romantic ballet: “I have a love-hate relationship with this technique. If it forged my body with precision and rigor, I do not believe in the supremacy of this academicism,” says the 26-year-old. (…) His latest piece, GIMME A BREAK!!! has as its starting point a remedy for depression developed during quarantine: an alternation of musical mix and transcendental meditation on rave music. With headbanging and speakers spewing drum'n'bass, orchestrated by Nelson Schaub, he above all outlines a political project: "I see this piece as a physical response to the system in which we operate. It's a catharsis. Letting go becomes a survival strategy in the face of capitalism,” concludes the choreographer. A joyful way to campaign.
- Belinda Mathieu, Télérama Sortir, 22.11.23

A solo charged with electronic music where the body resonates with the sound. (...) Inspired as much by a techno grammar as by meditative practices allowing the forgetting of oneself in iteration, Baptiste Cazaux lets go of reality and lets himself be carried by a force which carries him as close as possible to his spiritual aspirations. The object that emerges is a sort of performative UFO, which distills its vital, complex power over the long term. A unique artist to follow…
- Olivier Frégaville-Gratian d’Amore, loeildolivier.fr, 10.09.23

In the dance section of La Bâtie, this beginning of the week was marked by the alliances of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker with Bach and Baptiste Cazaux with rave music. (...) One might think the French twenty-something Baptiste Cazaux at the antipodes of an empress such as Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. It is true that the past from which the dancer draws his aesthetic references for his third creation dates back only to the 1970s – with this heavy metal marked by the practice of headbanging – as well as to the rave parties which flourished thereafter. However, in addition to seeing him meticulously move six speakers on the stage of L’Abri, his “GIMME A BREAK!!!” reveals a virtuosity so millimeter that it is reminiscent of the requirement of the Flemish [choreographer]. The electronic music of Nelson Schaub (aka Être Peintre) shakes the young man dressed in briefs and a striped shirt. He nods his upper body in a kind of repetitive and frenzied acquiescence, of which the performer seems prisoner. With each unexpected relaxation, the possessed savors the break: he sits down, sponges himself, rests his brutalized head, before being seized by a new trance. While no speech comes to adulterate this co-production of La Bâtie, it is impossible not to read in it, beyond the praise for letting go, a big no to “capitalist” overheating.
- Katia Berger, Tribune de Genève, 07.09.23

[ Portrait ] Baptiste Cazaux : creation as an outlet
- Angèle Cartier, Epic Magazine, 18.02.23