Elsa Michaud & Gabriel Gauthier

Rien que pour vos yeux is steeped in cinema references. With a nod to the twelfth James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only (1981), Elsa Michaud and Gabriel Gauthier imagine a “piece for a film heroine” in which they appropriate the codes of the big screen. The two artists reproduce, stripped of all context, the physical postures and attitudes that actresses adopt to arouse emotion. In the role of the heroine, with Thomas Laigle’s lighting design serving as her only close-up, Elsa Michaud per-forms a choreography punctuated by a series of micro-events but without any spectacular action, on a stage without scenery. To a sound-track composed by Pierre Aviat and David Leroy, her character passes through states forged by classic cinema scenes. Inspired by their experiences as spectators, Elsa Michaud and Gabriel Gauthier do away with dramatic flourishes in Rien que pour vos yeux to seek a form halfway between dance and visual arts.

Elsa Michaud and Gabriel Gauthier met at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, from which they are both gradautes. The interdisciplinary performances they create, straddling dance, music and performance, closely resemble spatial installations, and have been presented at the Ménagerie de Verre, the CN D, Actoral and the Entre Cour et Jardin festival and Plastique Danse Flore. They are currently in residence at the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers