REVIEW: The Festival d'Avignon Presents GROWING PIECE By Madeleine Fournier

In a Festival of sweeping epics, intimate works can easily get lost in the shuffle. Their idiosyncratic passions bob in the wake of productions that announce themselves as game-changing theatrical events. Madeleine Fournier's disarmingly charming and deeply considered Growing Piece, now performing at the Festival d'Avignon's CDCN d'Avignon, is one of those quieter works that deserves to be discovered. Performed by the choreographer alongside an extraordinary turn from bagpiper and composer Julien Desailly, this odd, intimate creation is a rare delight. Over the course of an hour, the pair combine conservatoire-level discipline with the infectious enthusiasm of two children determined to "put on a show" after dinner.

The stage is dominated by André Baglione's painted wreath of garland that arches toward the rafters before spilling across the floor. With lighting by Baglione and Nicolas Marie, the set conjures a gently Romantic atmosphere. It is knowingly kitsch, resembling a faded decorative painting forgotten in a guest room. Desailly first introduces the audience to the bagpipes before launching into its primordial moan. He wears an eccentric costume of contrasting textures: fitted dark fabrics around the torso paired with flowing purple trousers cropped at the calf. Fournier follows, clowning her grief in one of Lou Thonet's delightfully bizarre costumes. Swathed in a buoyant black garment crowned by an oversized black loofah-like headdress, she prances across the stage with exaggerated grimaces. Then comes the work's quiet miracle. She sheds the costume to reveal a close-fitting flesh-toned garment, remaining expressive throughout the transformation as her body gradually becomes that of a tree.

Growing Piece draws upon the myth of the Heliades, the daughters of Helios who, mourning the death of their brother Phaethon, are transformed into poplar trees. Fournier approaches this metamorphosis not as spectacle but as a slow unfolding. Time seems to suspend without ever coming to a halt. Her hands unfurl delicately into branches, recalling the sculptural precision of Maureen Fleming's work, with its fusion of butoh restraint and balletic control. The body that moments before delighted in grotesque clowning gradually settles into classical poise. Her outstretched arms evoke the Winged Victory of Samothrace while her feet seem to root ever deeper into the earth. Mourning gives way not to resignation but to vitality, and myth becomes an intimate meditation on transformation rather than an abstract allegory.

Desailly's accompaniment is indispensable. His hypnotic bagpipes carry the performance from the carnivalesque energy of its opening toward the quiet dignity of Fournier's metamorphosis. At moments, he punctuates the music with an electronic foot drum, gently propelling the rhythm forward and sharpening the audience's attention. Together, the performers reveal an uncommon confidence in the simplicity of their material. Growing Piece never mistakes understatement for timidity, nor does it inflate its modest ambitions into grandiose symbolism. It is sustained by a single imaginative impulse, pursued with unwavering conviction. The result is a work that is strange, tender, and wholly its own.

Photo Credit: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

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