Anatomical Venus
- Medium
- Contemporary dance collaboration
- Role
- Art direction and fabrication of the body sculptures
- Direction and choreography
- Sarah Baltzinger
- Co-creation and assistant choreography
- Isaiah Wilson
- Co-creation and performance
- Chiara Corbetta, Oceane Robin, Marie Levenez, Clara Lou Munié, Shynna Kalis
- Music
- Guillaume Jullien
- Dramaturgy
- Amandine Truffy, Isaiah Wilson, Sarah Baltzinger
- Set design
- Manon Terranova
- Lighting design and stage management
- Thibault Dubourg
- Photography
- Brian Ca, Steez, Marco Pavone, Sarah Aubel
- Co-producers
- Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, L'Arsenal, Cité Musicale-Metz, Festival Faits D'Hiver, Paris, TROIS CL, Centre de Création Chorégraphique Luxembourgeois
- Related
- Waxes
- Year
- 2024
For Anatomical Venus, a contemporary dance piece by Sarah Baltzinger, Manuela Ben Aïm art-directed and made the body sculptures.
Anatomical Venus is structured around a macabre figure and the life force. This new creation by Sarah Baltzinger references the fascinating wax models by Clemente Susini, created at the end of the 18th century to teach female anatomy to medical students, and regularly exhibited to the public—to address the issue of the appropriation of the female body. Here, the artist continues her exploration of a central question that underpins all her work: "What can one do with a body at one's disposal?" She develops her writing style around puppetry and mechanical gestures, revealing, in this piece, feminine identities experienced with absurdity.
Anatomical Venus unfolds a whole imaginary world that seizes upon bodies in order to better grasp them, drawing on the strange, erotic, and morbid particularities of these artificial, hollow, and open bodies. It is the friction between the distortion of gesture and what emerges from stillness that guides all the choreographic research of this new project.
