A “techno fairy tale” is how M.eV Kollectiv’s Marie-Ève Bonneau describes her newest multimedia dance performance, La Couleur du Blé. Bonneau, along with fellow artist and collaborator Veronica Benz, will perform the work in a large, geodesic dome that will descend upon Olympic Plaza from Friday, June 27 to Sunday, June 29.
The dome is rolling into town as part of FrancoForce, a portable cross-Canada festival. Corresponding with the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City, FrancoForce is all about promoting French artists and culture. This festival of all-things Francophone features more than 20 artists from a variety of disciplines including music, dance, visual arts and poetry. A dozen artists tour with the show nationally and another dozen, including Bonneau, will appear in Calgary only. “I feel I have an incredible amount of support here, not only as a French Canadian, but as an artist. I actually feel I get extra support and extra attention for being French in Calgary,” Bonneau says.
La Couleur du Blé (The Colour of Wheat) is based upon Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic tale, Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince).”Le Petit Prince is a metaphysical fable about an intergalactic boy and his adventures through the universe. He discovers human folly and learns what is essential and sacred,” says Bonneau.
A few months ago, while reading Le Petit Prince on a train, she was moved to tears by two chapters of the novella. “I said to myself, I need to re-create this. I need to share this with an audience,” she says.
The two chapters describe the friendship between a fox and the prince. “They create a bond and then have to part ways,” says Bonneau. “The show is a physical representation of that. The essence of the part we’re re-creating deals with what gifts are present when we love something, and when we’ve loved and lost someone, even though it’s so painful. It involves a deepening of the human experience.
“We’re using a French story, with the French language, to access a human truth: the common experience of what it is to love someone and to lose someone we love,” she adds. “It’s a universal, human experience — loving and losing.”
She takes on the role of the fox in the production. Going to the zoo, and studying the movement of animals, helped her prepare for the role. “I’m very inspired by the natural world and all the creatures in it. I’ve taken time at the zoo, observing animals. I try to mimic animal motions in my human form,” she says. “I looked at not just the physical traits of a fox, but also the symbolism around the fox, and I try to channel that through the body.”
The 30-minute piece also involves a multimedia component. Original drawings from Saint-Exupery’s tale are projected on the walls of the dome throughout the show. In addition, Trevor Nugent-Smith created an original score to audio-illustrate the production. “We selected progressive electronic music, and Trevor recorded me reading two chapters of Le Petit Prince. He mixed the narrative into the musical track, and mixed the tracks together, so you can hear me reading the story throughout,” says Bonneau.
La Couleur du Blé is the first show Bonneau will stage under the name of her new company, M.eV Kollectiv. “We plan on developing this piece further. We plan on touring it in schools,” she says.
In the meantime, Bonneau will be busy at the Calgary Stampede doing some work as a living statue and preparing a snake charmer dance she’ll be presenting at the Zoogala in September.
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