Vacances vacance

In Vacances vacance, Ondine Cloez pays tribute to all those moments when you’re not exactly where you should be, because you’re late, somewhere else, on holiday or away from your body. It is an observation of what is not there, now, but perhaps was, before, or elsewhere. The piece is made up of to-ing and fro-ing between body and thought, of little journeys whose aim is for absence to appear. And with it, perhaps, the absent.

It’s a solo, a monologue that gradually becomes a choreographic piece. Ondine unfolds a thought, a logorrhea in which she talks about holidays, hypnosis, NDEs (Near Death Experiences), clumsiness, stammering, Demosthenes, grace and above all absence.

She enunciates states of the body, then experiences them physically. Ondine is outside her body, beside it, before it, after it. By dint of insistence, she arrives at a strange dance in which she seems to be absent from her own body. She dissects this dance, which she calls grace.

Ondine tries to create a horizontal relationship with the audience through direct communication. She establishes a relationship of trust; she says what she does and vice versa. Everything is transparent. Little by little, she distends the relationship, she empties it. The play ends with a challenge: to disappear while remaining present, to let absence become the main character of the play.