Nicolas Zemmour / Kyra Jean Green – September 14, 2022

L’enfer d’un monde, by Nicolas Zemmour, is a choreographic creation stamped with humanity. Inspired by the steep rise of domestic violence in the aftermath of the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, the piece explores both the depths of human violence and the hope for a redeeming strength to pull through and achieve rebirth.

Kyra Jean Green’s piece explores what life can be when one forgets their emotions and physical sensations. The main character suffers from alexithymia, the inability to identify and describe one’s own emotions, and anaphia, the inability to feel touch. She finds herself in a world where everything is numb. All alone on stage, she remembers what it is like to feel touch and emotions, but her memory falters. The intimate performance showcases the private world of an individual who is desperate to feel again.

The Smile Club, by Kyra Jean Green, explores how attractive, yet how ridiculous, this idea can be. Retrospectively, it seems odd to associate the temporary relief of a forced smile to the experience of real happiness. It now seems even more absurd to misunderstand the slow and autonomous process of replacing negative thought patterns linked to trauma from cancer treatments, a common occurrence in the history of psychiatry. However, even nowadays, depressed people are often advised to smile more. The Smile Club imagines a fictitious version of the “forced smile” experiment.