When choreographer Nina Santes met dancer Elsa Monguillot de Mirman, she asked her, “What have you never done on stage?” Elsa answered: “I have never frightened my audience”. Thus was born La Venerina: a short solo piece that addresses both notions of monstrosity and beauty, intertwined in a ballet dancer’s body.

Initially, La Venerina is an anatomical wax sculpture, created during the XVIIth century by Clemente Susini. She is this voiceless, nameless woman, whose body is being opened, dissected, observed, by powerful male scientists. Today, through this solo, La Venerina wakes up again, and in a vibrant state, she strips her body and lets us look under the skin, one last time.

This solo – the dancer’s first – becomes a plot of risk and danger, but also of empowerment, transgression and self-transformation. Designed as a micro-fiction or a movie scene, it portrays voice and sound as central aspects of presence, extensions of movement. From a living-dead slow motion to bursts of libido, Elsa Monguillot de Mirman becomes a vessel for the figure of La Venerina, and through her, draws a very intimate ritual of mutation.

Conception, choreography – Nina Santes, invited by the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon as part of the Danser Encore program.

CREDITS
Conception, choreography	Nina Santes
Dance, collaboration, interpretation	Elsa Monguillot de Mirman, dancer of Lyon Opera Ballet
Costumes and scenography	Pauline Brun
Light design	Yohann Fourcade, Lyon Opera Ballet
Sound design	Jean-Pierre Barbier, Lyon Opera Ballet
Production	La Fronde Lyon Opera Ballet with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels

DATES	TOUR
5th – 6th June 2021	Opéra de Lyon, Fr

DATES	RESIDENCY
1st – 4th june 2021	Les Subsistances, Lyon
27th may – 29th may 2021	Opéra de Lyon, Fr
10th – 19th may 2021	Bristol, Uk
17th – 21st august 2020	Opéra de Lyon, Fr