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Recording: 2020-02-14 , Sophiensæle (Video © Walter Bickmann)

Cécile Bally

The End of the Road

Sophiensæle

Production Details / Press Releases

Dystopian suburbs of teenage dreams and nightmares. A group of girls meet. They dream of the future and share both individual and collective memories, oscillating between boredom and panic in the highly-planned architecture of their environment. Trapped amongst the remains of an urban nightmare built on earnest but misguided community housing projects, they wonder: Are there still possibilities waiting at The End of the Road? Cécile Bally’s social critique uses Sitcom-strategies to examine visions of radical change at the peripheries of urban life and transports the audience into an imaginary space at the borders of the city.

Cécile Bally is a Berlin-based choreographer and performer who graduated in dance and choreography at HZT Berlin, UDK. She previously studied Economics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Pantheon Sorbonne University in France. Her artistic work creates connections between these backgrounds and interrogates, with humour, the place of rationality and magical realism in performance. Cécile Bally roots her work in the science-fiction genre with an eye on social criticism, and therefore studies entitites (vampires, supermarkets), triggering dreams, and nightmares both utopian and dystopian.
cecilebally.com

A GROUP OF TEENAGE GIRLS MEET. Sitting on a bench, they discuss their personal and collective troubles, share memories and dream of what they could become. Together they search for strategies to deal with their environment, exploring the possibilities at the end of the road.

In this work, Cécile Bally explores the edge of the city, the periphery, where civilization as we know it ends and the imaginary begins. Throughout time these spaces have been invested with many utopian projections and dreams of radical change. Social and architectural visionaries have made it into a testing ground for the society of the future. When built and lived in, however, these utopian experiments often turn out to be nightmares, dystopian places that connect to a feeling of angst and disillusion, rather than creating the possibility for an ideal community.

Different buildings from different peripheries perform as the background for this piece:

LES ÉSPACES D’ABRAXAS (1982), built by Spanish architecht Ricardo Bo ll, is the kind of post-modern utopian housing project erected to solve a housing crisis in the east of Paris. It hosts 600 living units, spread out over three buildings. Inspired by the Greek Odeon and the Roman Amphitheater, this place was designed to be centered around itself in an attempt to decentralize the Parisian metropolis. Its purpose failed. Due to its futuristic atmosphere the building has been the scene for dystopian science ction lms, such as Brazil (1984) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (2015).

WBS 70 OR WOHNUNGSBAUSERIE 70, is a speci c type of Plattenbau, a construction method that makes use of large prefabricated concrete slabs. The technique enabled the German Democaric Republic (GDR) to develop whole new areas very fast. Throughout the 1970s, WBS 70 buildings rose up all over Berlin. One of the prime examples – ‘die Platte aller Platten’ – can be found on Roederplatz. In the same place, there is a series of another type of Plattenbau (WBS/QP 71-R) adorned by big rainbows.

LES DAMIERS (1976), built by Jacques Binoux and Michel Folliasson in Courbevoie, a suburb of Paris that became a major business district over the last years. It comprises 640 apartments divided in four buildings. Twelve years ago, the inhabitants of Les Damiers learned that the buildings would be demolished and replaced by two gigantic towers, the Hermitage Plaza, which should host of ces, high end appartments and a Hotel. The habitants of Les Damiers have been evicted but due to a lack of funding, the construction of the towers hasn’t started yet.

LES ARCADES DU LAC (1981), built by Ricardo Bo ll, is an ensemble of appartement buildings located 25km west of Paris. Due to its close proximity to Versailles, but also due to the immensity of the building, the Arcades are also de ned as “Versailles for the people”. Constructed as a pedestrian area, the site is suprisingly empty as all blocks are connected through an underground parking system which makes it uncessary to pass through the outside to go home.

NEW
Who’s that girl it’s new
Nobody fools that girl it’s New
New, new, new, she’s new to the crew
And new to the block, come and look what she got She’s from another crew but they kicked her out They call her a murderer cause she killed the meow She didn’t know what she did, oh no, oh no
She is a ghter and a brain
And maybe she’s too cool for you to comprehend
You don’t know how smart she is sitting on the bench Trying to prove her worth, among her other friends Who’s that girl it’s new
Nobody fools that girl it’s New
New, new, new, she is new to the crew
And new to the block, come and look what she got

STARDUST
Stardust, the girl from next door
Pessimistic human and eventually bored
She doesn’t care about your fancy ass shorts
Cause nothing really matters in this century’s world
Born in the block, second of ve in a big family
You may have seen her panicking, cause she ain’t got no legacy She cannot nd the remedy, something to keep her breathing There is just one feeling, but she don’t know where to begin She was dreaming of a life in the city
But you don’t see her leaving cause the price is too risky Better hide behind the idea of fate
Cause if you never try, well guess what you won’t fail
Stardust, the girl from next door
Pessimistic human and eventually bored
She doesn’t care about your fancy ass shorts
Cause nothing really matters in this century’s world

GLITCH
She is a bitch type girl, like a rich white girl
You’ll ask who it is? It is Glitch right there
She is fun to have around, always ready to go out
Her friends are all that counts, yeah, she lets this booty bounce Like a libra, doesn’t want this, but doesn’t want that either Wants to love, but is afraid that love will deceive her
Indecisive diva, a woman of high calibre
Her heart is shaky and inconsistent like Gelatina
Raised by her granny, she ain’t got no daddy
He and mama left her in the block they weren’t ready
Always on the move, the feelings are way too heavy
The last time she felt close to her mom was in her belly
She is a bitch type girl, like a rich white girl
You’ll ask who it is? It is Glitch right there
She is fun to have around, always ready to go out
Her friends are all that counts, yeah, she lets this booty bounce

[Source: play bill & sophiensaele.com]

TFB Nr. 1426

Cast & Credits

ARTISTIC DIRECTION, PERFORMANCE: Cécile Bally
PERFORMANCE: Julia Plawgo, Sunayana Shetty, Layton Lachman
DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT: Jonas Rutgeerts
LIGHT DESIGN: Emma Juliard
SOUND DESIGN: Jassem Hindi
RAP: Haszcara
STAGE DESIGN: Pablo Ramón Benitez, Cécile Bally
COSTUMES, PROPS: Sara Wendt
OUTSIDE EYE: Asaf Aharonson
PRODUCTION: Ann-Christin Görtz, Valerie Terwei
PRESSE: Louise Trueheart

A production by Cécile Bally in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE.
Funded by the Capital Cultural Fund.
With the support of De School van Gaasbeek and Flutgraben Performances.

Sophiensæle

Sophienstraße 18
10178 Berlin

sophiensaele.com
Map

Tickets: (030) 283 52 66

Video Documentation

The video documentation is produced on behalf of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe. The purpose of this contract is to document productions in the field of contemporary dance in Berlin. The master recordings are archived by the University Library of the Berlin University of Arts. Copies of the recordings on DVD are available for viewing exclusively in the reference collections of the following archives (at media desks in these institutions):

University Library of the Berlin University of Arts
Mediathek für Tanz und Theater des Internationalen Theaterinstituts / Mime Centrum Berlin
Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT)

Cécile Bally / Trailers and Video Documentations

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