Gisèle Vienne
associate artist
2021 > 2022

The body as a locus for the development of knowledge and the questioning of our culturally constructed systems of perception: this will be the main focus of Gisèle Vienne’s residence at the Centre National de la Danse. This exceptional period of companionship, spread over 2021 and 2022, will offer the choreographer, director and visual artist a space for experimentation that resonates with the various missions of the CN D, from production to research and teaching.
Since the CN D is a symbolic place for dance, where history is written and rewritten, Gisèle Vienne wishes to propose a reflection on “the political and societal importance of the choreographic field”. As an extension of her choreographic work, which has focused for a long time on dissecting the way in which the perception of reality is culturally shaped and naturalised, the residency will associate artists and theorists with her quest to reorient the gaze, to analyse systems of domination in order to deconstruct them, and to place the senses at the heart of thinking. A regular visitor to Pantin for many years now, the Compagnie de Gisèle Vienne will also occupy the CN D spaces for several projects and new productions.
In March 2021, a fiction-documentary will be shot at the CN D around Jerk, a dark reenactment of the crimes perpetrated by the American serial killer Dean Corll, which Gisèle Vienne directed in 2008. Then, in tandem with one of her close collaborators, the dancer Katia Petrowick, the choreographer will propose a performance in autumn 2021 before developing a new production planned for 2022.

Gisèle Vienne is a franco-austrian artist, choreographer and director. After graduating in Philosophy, she studied at the puppeteering school Ecole Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette. She works regularly with, among others, the writer Dennis Cooper and the musicians Peter Rehberg and Stephen O'Malley. Over the past 20 years, her work has been touring in Europe and regularly performed in Asia and in America, among which, I Apologize (2004), Kindertotenlieder (2007), Jerk (2008), This is how you will disappear (2010), LAST SPRING: A Prequel (2011), The Ventriloquists Convention (2015) in collaboration with Puppentheater Halle and Crowd (2017). In 2020, she created with Étienne Bideau-Rey a fourth version of Showroomdummies at the Rohm Theater Kyoto, originally created in 2001. Gisèle Vienne has frequently been exhibiting her photographs in museums among which the New York Whitney Museum, the Centre Pompidou, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires. With Dennis Cooper, Peter Rehberg and Jonathan Capdevielle she published two books : Jerk / Through Their Tears and 40 Portraits 2003-2008, in collaboration with Dennis Cooper and Pierre Dourthe in February 2012. Her work has led to various publications and the original music of her shows to several albums. Her latest show L’Étang (The Pond) based on Robert Walser’s short story Der Teich was created in November 2020 at the TNB in Rennes.