Quiet Light
Dance performance by Cindy Van Acker
Théâtre Les Halles, as part of Biennale Son, October 2 and 3, 2025, 7pm
Cindy Van Acker's latest creation, Quiet Light, is a powerful, atmospheric work. It is haunted by magnificent performers Stéphanie Bayle and Daniela Zaghini, who populate the stage with presence and absence. As the title suggests - silent light - Victor Roy's lighting scheme creates random conditions of visibility: you never know when the dancers will appear or disappear. This play with shadows is exhilarating, full of trompe-l'œil, spectacular jumps in scale and breathtaking superimpositions. With dance, Cindy Van Acker has sought out the steaminess and deep blacks beloved of Léon Spilliaert's paintings: she spent long hours alone in the Flemish painter's retrospective at Lausanne's Fondation de l'Hermitage in 2023.
Held together by the striking gemellity of these two bodies, the piece tracks down sensations of ephemerality and evanescence, as do the sounds of young American Lea Bertucci, processed by Denis Rollet. An electronic breath that at times seems to link all beings present in the theater, in an unreal suspense. In this choreographic composition, as meticulous as lace, there is a kind of radical self-emptying. What's left? Constantly shifting visual disturbances. Meteorology. Of the infra-perceptive. Cindy Van Acker substitutes pictorial fragility, temporal porosity, furtive encounters and precise lines for a belief in masterful, standardized representation, in an attempt to approach what might lie between matter and anti-matter. A sensitive poetics enchanted by a dance of almost nothing.
Photo © Mathilda Olmi
