She smiles through tears

This is a machine translation, hence the errors. The original in French is located on GueschPatti.com: Elle sourit aux larmes

A history of desire, pleasure and freedom. Art and friendship, these 2 elements come together in the Guesch Patti performance She smiles through tears. The performance consists of five solos by five different choreographers (Odile Azagury, Odile Duboc, Pascale Houbin, Daniel larrieu, Domenica Marcy), under the direction of Anne-Marie Reynaud. "Dance has been my passion since early childhood", says Guesch Patti. I needed to find the thread that connected to myself, to go back to the root, now, at this most significant period in my life. Thanks to this evening conceived exclusively with artists that I personally like (I've known some of them for a long time), I brought together my ideal family of performers.

"I am becoming myself again". Without false modesty, Guesch Patti slips by in the heart of the subject. Art, like expression intimates to be it; friendship, with its consequences: respect, generosity, confidence. Very to propel what is initially a history of desire and pleasure, of freedom that one agrees and that one gives to the others, of assumed risk and mild madness. She smiles through tears is posed like a choreographic formula unaccustomed to the scale of Guesch Patti's personality.

With the Other

Misunderstanding is the basis of theatre.
The World is a theatre.
I live in the world theatre,
Where anything is not looked after, one notes.
I, confide in you
I recopy my body.
I *défroisse* my flesh.
I crawl until me to raise.
I try to touch you.
Each one belonged to the other.
Like the attraction of perfumes
Like reconstituted dust.
I deeply like this waiting.
This looking upon the other is an awkward feeling.
But it suggests the risk.
One needs courage to be well.
so much of equal things, nothing.
I could about it suspect the ill will.
But, you remain, always, in Balance
And, the misunderstandings are erased.

To dare to become what I am. Before she became a hit singer in 1988 with the song Étienne, the Paris Opera's former "Petit Rat" worked for 15 years in Roland Petit's company, later she chose contemporary dance by spending eight years with Anne Béranger and Joseph russillo's company, she collaborated with Carolyn Carlson and with the "Four Solaire" of Anne-Marie Reynaud and Odile Azagury. She has been something of a militant since the early seventies with this new form of dance which was going to revolutionize the choreographic landscape, at the same time she also helped to promote France with a performance at an expo conference where she did almost everything, from cashier to entertaining children while passing through the dancer in tutu with the justaucorps. She also danced for television, for example in shows with Sylvie Vartan and Nana Mouskouri. In 1984 she launched DaCapo, 3 dancing girls who loved to sing, following that she took the chance to go solo with the song Étienne.

A type of success followed for which she still pays the price: "I suddenly found myself in an extraordinary position for which I was not responsible. In the role of the popular singer, they wanted me to keep playing the same role. But I want to be a chameleon, a multi disciplined artist, singer, actress, dancer and I want to be able to pass from one thing to another in a natural way. I want to be able to express the ambiguity that is part of me, to construct work that resembles me, with nuances, doubts, projections, in short to dare to become what I am." The tone is firm, the language armoured by honesty. After the hype, Guesch Patti, at her own pace, continues to record the type of music which is precious to her: Blonde, La Marquise and La Chinoise, songs who are on the soundtrack of the Peter Greenaway film The Pillow Book (1995), she also worked with him on an Opera project.

None of the 5 choreographers refused her request. When she speaks about her craft, not only does she entice, but she also convinces. For example, none of the five choreographers who were asked for this performance thought for a second about refusing her proposal. Following Daniel Larrieu, who had already done part of it at the time of a white chart in contemporary Theatre of the dance in 1998, all yielded to the attraction of this "enigmatic star". If Odile Azagury "initially had some jitters" about writing for an interpreter whom he had not chosen himself, he was quickly won over by "her generosity, the depth of her commitment to dance and the almost crowned affection which she has for the dancers". Odile Duboc remembered her first meeting with Guesch thirty years ago in Paris in the classes of Joseph Russille: "She had what I would describe as, a quite simply explosive presence." Pascale Houbin says that "Guesch is a beautiful person to know and if only for that, it's worth any potential sorrow". As for Domenica Mercy, whose plans with Pina Bausch left him little time, he agreed to do a choreography for the first time in his life. He created a series of brief interludes that bind the various solos together. A voyage which also reads like the logbook of a woman's life. "A woman of desire and emotion who affirms her fifty years and her maturity as an artist", specifies Anne-Marie reynaud. "It is in fact acted dramatic entertainment", specifies Guesch Patti with a laughter that twirls like a pirouette. She smiles... through the tears.

Rosita Boisseau

Guesch Patti would like to thank: Mohamed Ahmada, Isabelle Nanty, Redjep Mitrovitsa, Thierry de Peretti, Jacqueline Finaert, Christophe Ribes and all at équipe du CND, Marie-Thérèse Allier et l'équipe de la ménagerie de verre, Gilles Kleber, Thierry Boccon-Gibod, Fanny de Chaillé, Philippe Decouflé et DCA, Franck Lapouille, Jeanne Guerlin, Isabelle Mazouzi, Marie-Christine Franc, Patricia Heiden, Valérie Dubus, Yann Apperry.