CHEZ MICHOU (The Mystery of Blue)

Mobilizing the format and legacy of the cabaret genre, the project Chez Michou by  Žak Branko Valenta entangles the image of the French singer and drag artist Michou with a poetic reflection on dis-orientation. The bodies on stage activate a queer spatiality that blurs the border between the inner and the outside world, between abstraction and the realities of fiction. Navigating imagination into the muddles of identity, the choreography unfolds a cartography of dislocation saturated with the vibrant textures of objects, gestures and words. The collapse of heteronormative structures is radicalized through the potentiality of flesh to push against fixed coordinates and perform the subject being somehow out of place. As an invitation to get lost, Chez Michou celebrates the disappearing horizon and retraces the affective territories of Otherness.

Authorship and choreography: Žak Branko Valenta
Co-creators and performers: Toni Flego, Maria Arkouli / Eleonora Magdalena Vrdoljak,Ekin Tunçeli,Hannah Krebs, Žak Branko Valenta
Dramaturgy: Andrej Mirčev
Visual identity: Nikoleta Mirčev
Music: Dušan Maksimovski
Production: Artistic Organisation TRAFIK; RIjeka, MDT Moderna Danstatern Stockholm, SKH Stockholm University of the Arts
Duration: 50 min

Special thanks to:
Thanks to my supervisors Dinis Machado, Dr. Andrej Mirčev and Siegmar Zacharias .
Special thanks to my mentor Jennifer Lacey.
Many thanks to Karin Hauptmann, producer MA Choreography SKH.

Note: For your convenience, you can leave your shoes in front of the entrance to the performance area and pick them up afterwards on the exit.