Je me suis sauvée...littéralement

So last night I think I truly understood the importance of the double-entendre in the French phrase "je me sauve," which the French use as a colloquial form of saying that you're heading out/splitting/whatever. It's not vulgar or anything, just fairly informal. And of course literally it means "I'm saving myself."

Last night had all the trappings of being awesome. I had a ticket to the new Bartabas show, Darshan. The deal with Bartabas is that he's this dude who's obsessed with horses and he created a specific type of performance called "théâtre équestre" (equestrian theater). What the hell is théâtre équestre, you ask? Well, just what it sounds like...theater centered around horses, haha. He runs a theater troupe called Zingaro, and it's a whole team of actors/horse trainers. I saw another show he did back in 2006, at the Avignon theater festival. That show was called Battuta, and it was nothing short of awesome. It was in this big circular theater outside town (obviously, if you're traveling with tons of horses, you need room, haha). Seating was done in a circle, and the show took place in the middle. The horses would run around the inner circle while the actors did all sorts of crazy stunts. We're talking impressive circus acrobatics here--jumps and flips and even doing dances on the horses' backs while the horses are galloping at breakneck speeds. All while telling a story (admittedly a not too complicated one, since half the spectacle was the acrobatics). But Battuta did indeed have a storyline involving a gypsy caravan. It was particularly awesome because it had all sorts of fun gypsy music. The whole thing was just super uptempo and lively. Perhaps not the highest form of theater, but it sure was impressive.

Anyway, with all that in mind, you can imagine my excitement at finally getting a ticket to see their new show, this time in their home base at the Fort d'Aubervilliers, just outside Paris. I bought this ticket back in January, that's how booked they are! So I've been waiting for four years to see the next Zingaro production, and once it finally arrived I had to wait four months to get a ticket, haha.

So I got to the fort yesterday and was optimistic that the awesomeness would continue. The entrance is a restaurant, kind of like that other show I went to a few months ago (the théâtre du soleil). There were all sorts of really cool decorations on the wall from previous performances, and the whole place was like a shrine to horses. Very powerful and also majestic and beautiful. So far so good.

They took us in groups to our seats, and in an interesting twist, the seating was in the center, with the show happening in a circle around us. The seating looked like a giant cone with like ten rows of seats, if that makes sense. Again, so far so good, that was clearly rather cool.

Then the show began. And that's about when I started wanting to die of boredom. The pacing was painfully slow, and the most disappointing part of all is that most of it was behind these sheer curtains ringing the space. There were some cool parts with shadows, but for the most part it was just excruciatingly boring. Also brings new meaning to the phrase "being bored to tears." I wanted to die. You didn't even get to see many horses, they didn't come out much at all. It was waaaaay different from the last show, where the horses were so clearly the stars of the show. This time around it was supposed to be a form of visual art, I would guess, but it was repetitive and just plain boring.

The other thing that bothered me was the orientalism of the show. The title, Darshan, comes from Sanskrit, and the whole thing involved all sorts of stereotyped images of the silk route--all the orientalized images of central asia, etc. Nomadism and general solitude, the force of nature in the desert, you name it, they used it. Hell, there was even a whole part with chopsticks, as if they hadn't hit you over the head hard enough with the stereotypes already. They also projected images on the sheets, all sorts of "native" designs depicting exile and wandering, etc. In short, it was the Quai Branly museum turned into a horse show. "Let's go gape at the noble savages and impose our Western gaze on something by defining it according to our own terms!"

Since I had a lot of time to think during this show (since god knows I couldn't stare at the same images going round and round and round), I realized that perhaps this troupe likes their stereotypes, since the last show was pretty chock full of gypsy stereotypes too. Caravans, particular music, etc. From there, that led me to ponder the fact that it didn't bother me at the time. And why. Was it because I was less nuanced of a spectator four years ago? Perhaps, but I'm not convinced. And that's when I started to wonder if perhaps it's gypsy culture itself, that we're all so wrapped up in the stereotypes already that it didn't even hit me. Or maybe it was because that show was just plain fun. In any event, all I cared about at the end of this show was getting the hell out. I thus "me sauver"-ed, both literally and figuratively. I split and saved myself, all at once.

Unfortunately, everyone else in the audience appears to have felt the same way. I'm not sure I've ever been to a show before where the applause died down BEFORE the actors ever came out! haha. People had to start clapping again politely when the actors came out, since I suppose we all figured it would be rude not to. But when have you ever seen that? Then everyone on the train ride home was dissing it to. Sounded like it was a room full of people bored to tears, just like me.

Today I decided that perhaps it was time to check the reviews of the show, and sure enough, I apparently had it coming. They're all awful, haha. My favorite was perhaps one that appeared in Le Monde and was entitled Voyage au bout de l'ennui. Of which I approved mainly because of the play on words in the title, which says it all. There's a fabulous book by Celine called Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the end of the night), and with a very basic word substitution, the title sounds the same but l'ennui = boredom. So yeah, it was right there, plain as day, in Le Monde, that this show was a Journey to the end of boredom. hahahahahaha. Indeed it was.

Anyway, I originally started this entry with the plan of writing about a few other performances I've seen recently (most notably a burqa ballet and the Philip Glass opera based on In the Penal Colony). But I've rambled enough for now, I think, and maybe I'll save those for next time, haha.