UK Premiere

Steven Cohen (Lille)

put your heart under your feet... and walk!

Friday 18 October 2024, 8.00pm9.00pm

Midlands Arts Centre, Cannon Hill Park
Birmingham, B12 9QH United Kingdom
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60 minutes | £15/13 | 18+

The video in the performance includes graphic content partially filmed in a slaughterhouse. Please contact Fierce at contact@wearefierce.org for more information.

A close up of a person’s face and shoulders against an orange background. They have intricate and highly decorative face paint in orange, white, gold and black and exaggerated lashes.

Pierre Planchenault

A person in a tutu is standing on stilts made of small white coffins. They are bending forward leaning on large poles in either hand. Behind them on a screen we can see a pair of pointe ballet shoes. On the floor are objects light in perfect squares of white light.

Pierre Planchenault

The torso, head and shoulders of a person rises out from a bright space filled with smoke. They are wearing a corset and have elaborate face painting. Their right arm is raised and pointing to the ceiling and their left hand is outstretched.

Allan Thiebault

A person is behind a large gold chandelier lighting its candles. We can see they have highly decorative face paint on.

Pierre Planchenault

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Steven Cohen engages in a deeply moving ceremony in memory of his partner, the dancer Elu, who passed away after 20 years of life together. A cathartic gesture doubled with a brave profession of faith in art as a ritual that celebrates life. He invites the public to celebrate love with him, and to engage in dialogue with death. Everything that happens is real.

“This work is an expression of accepting my destiny in not dying alongside Elu, an experiment in how to deal with survivor guilt in an effort to keep my amputated heart still beating, in how to bear tribute to our lives so richly danced in poverty.

I will let the dead bury the dead and I will produce a vital art, in celebration of our shared life – sometimes with the wind in its sails, sometimes by crawling on “the boulevard of broken dreams”

The last wish that Elu expressed to me on his deathbed was “I want to be with you forever”. It will be so.”

Attending a work by Steven Cohen is always an indelible experience. His ability to transform his body into a work of art, his face and his skull into a landscape, seems limitless. Painted, adorned with rhinestones, butterfly wings, entirely powdered, he becomes here a magical and striking deity of timeless beauty.

put your heart under your feet… and walk! is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) and Otter (Weekend Max) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Choreography, Scenography, Costumes and Interpretation: Steven Cohen
Lights: Yvan Labasse
Videos: Richard Muller & SHU
Video Management: Baptiste Evrard
External Regard: Catherine Cossa
Stage Management: Samuel Mateu

Production: Cie Steven Cohen
Co-Production: humain Trop humain – Centre Dramatique National (Montpellier), Montpellier Danse, and Dance Umbrella (Johannesburg) with the support of DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Show created on June 24, 2017 at the Centre Dramatique National de Montpellier as part of the Montpellier Danse Festival.

Access

This performance contains haze effects. In addition, there will be a quiet space at MAC to de-compress following the performance if needed.

Fierce Says

Steven Cohen is a legend. He returns to Fierce after presenting SPHINCTEROGRAPHY in 2014 and we are honoured to present maybe the final performance of put your heart under your feet… and walk! The images he creates here are haunting, sumptuous, devastating, and undeniable. We can’t wait to talk to you about this one afterwards.

Details

Friday 18 October 2024

8.00pm

Midlands Arts Centre, Theatre