PEELING BACK
Nina Santes, 2023
Peeling Back is the first episode in the Beauty Glow Tanning Studio cycle (2023-2026).
“Welcome to the Beauty Glow Tanning Studio.
A subtle alchemy of traditional and avant-garde methods.
Take a seat, relax, be (un)comfortable.
Let us take care of it.
Let it flow, let it leak, let it speak, let it grow.”
In 2021, I’ve started with a new artistic cycle, which I’ve called The Beauty Glow Tanning Studio. This cycle is divided into three parts :
> Peeling Back (solo – opening January 2023),
> Wet Songs (collective piece – 2025),
> Deep Deep Down Detox (days of immersion and practice – from 2023).
The Beauty Glow Tanning Studio is an imaginary place, hijacking the beauty salon and the experimental laboratory, in which I offer my “aesthetic services” and deploy a form of choreographic science fiction.
In there, we conduct sensitive experiments in which bodies are hosts to restorative fictions, digesting and composting the waste products of violence.
Peeling Back is an eight-enclosure solo set against a backdrop of untinted mirrors. In the piece, the body, the voice and a collection of accessories operate and activate to symbolically remove the dead, toxic skins that cover a body and its social identities.
Beautician, spa client, cyborg… A hybrid body evolves in a cabin of broken mirrors, facing its own perforated reflection. Time is alternately suspended, dilated, criss-crossed by cracks, flashes and bugs.
Peeling Back’s choreography is composed of strata, like layers of epidermis. It is based on the idea of cycle, repetition and alteration of gestures. Gestures of preparation, care and cleaning are composed, repeated and deformed, until the body is butchered. Between the stripping away and the turning up of the flesh.
The piece begins with an ultra-exposed post-human body, as if subjected to the gaze at the center of the quadrifrontal space. The result is a trajectory of shattered structures, and a new configuration of gestures and relationships, alive and vulnerable.
| CREDITS | |
|---|---|
| Conception, performance | Nina Santes |
| Dramaturgy collaborator | Lynda Rahal |
| Scenographer | Bia Kaysel |
| Costumes and accessories | Roberto Martinez |
| Stage design and costume | Apolline Jolly |
| Light creation | Annie Leuridan |
| Sound creation | Nicolas Martz |
| Technical contact | Louise Rustan |
| Construction of decor | Eliott Forest et Clément Doyen |
| Production, development | Barbara Coffy |
| Production, communication | Tiphanie Chauvin |
| With voice presences | Avec les présences vocales Bia Kaysel, Marina Hoisnard, Mathilde Forget, Maeva Santes, Marie-Claire Charvet, Sylvie Pattou, Annie Leuridan |
| Production | La Fronde – Nina Santes & Ève Magot |
| Coproduction | Centre Chorégrapique National de Grenoble – CCN2 |
| Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – CCNO | |
| Le Manège, scène nationale-Reims | |
| Gessnerallee – Zurich | |
| Les Hivernales – CDCN d’Avignon | |
| Nina Santes benefits from the Associate Artist programme set up by the Ministry of Culture, at the Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans from 2021 to 2023 | |
| Nina Santes and La Fronde are also associated artist with the Manège – Scène nationale de Reims, from September 2021 to June 2024 |
| DATES | TOUR |
|---|---|
| 9-10th March, 2024 | Gessnerallee, Zurich, Switzerland |
| June 8th, 2023 | JUNE EVENTS – festival of the Atelier de Paris / CDCN |
| March 28th, 2023 | Le Manège, scène nationale-Reims, Fr |
| 1 March – 3 March 2023 | Festival DañsFabrik – Brest, Fr |
| January 26th and 27th, 2023 | PREMIÈRE – Théâtre d’Orléans, Fr (with the collaboration of CCNO and SNO) |
| DATES | RESIDENCIES |
|---|---|
| January 9 to 20, 2023 | Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – CCNO, Fr |
| November 7th to 12th, 2022 | Gessnerallee, Zurich, Switzerland |
| October 28, 2022 | Working process – CCNO |
| October 7 to 28, 2022 | Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – CCNO, Fr |
| September 22, 2022 | Working process – Les Hivernales |
| September 12th to 23rd, 2022 | Les Hivernales – CDCN d’Avignon, Fr |
| June 11, 2022 | Working process – CCNO |
| May 30 to June 11, 2022 | Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – CCNO, Fr |
| February 17, 2022 | Working process – Le Manège |
| February 7 to 18, 2022 | Le Manège, scène nationale-Reims, Fr |
| December 10, 2021 | Working process – CCN2 Guest : Hortense Belhôte |
| December 6 to 11, 2021 | Centre Chorégrapique National de Grenoble – CCN2, Fr |
