Les Filles de la Mer ( Daughters of the Sea) is a contemporary work combining theater, dance, and performance, which focuses on four women from different parts of the world (Asia, Africa, and Europe), from different cultures, with different stories, who migrate for different reasons. Their paths cross in France in a story of rape and murder.
The sea is the common element in these unique lives. The notion of geographical and symbolic insularity is one of the elements of research in the dramaturgy.
From space to movement, our other element of research focuses on the notion of real or dreamt departure, the migratory movement of souls. Migrating, moving from one point to another, a direction connecting different inspirations, all converging towards a possible Other. From the self to the Other, a quest for identity, social and cultural, at the very core of ourselves.
The show first questions women’s relationship with today’s society in a diverse social landscape. We question our affiliations, on the one hand singular, linked to cultural contexts of origin, and on the other hand universal, linked to our condition as women.

We question our bodies, repositories of cultures, silent witnesses to our journeys. These bodies that speak to the world and encompass our souls. Sliding under the skin, searching for a gesture to reach the moon, stirring the sea within us and at the same time overturning us in an inner shipwreck that pushes back the boundaries of our anatomy. Choreography from the inside out, from the outside in, towards oneself, towards you. Shipwrecked by ourselves.

We also examine the natural environment, which nourishes our lives and our imaginations. In particular, with Les Filles de la Mer, we use the concepts of insularity and the sea to question our environment, its real impact on our survival as well as its symbolic impact on the formation of our identities.
The sea distances us from the continent, but it connects us to the infinitely vast, to the immensity of possibilities that our imagination allows us to see.
The trial, in voiceover, is the dramatic framework that draws the lines of a narrative in the background. The trial structures the discourse that incriminates us and reveals the facts in their most objective lucidity. Suspended beneath the framework of this narrative are bubbles of poetic breath that lance the boil to inspire us with the theatricality of the material, the choreography, the dream. The poetic gesture slips through the cracks in the discourse, dismantling reason to break the locks of the imagination.

The choreography contributes to the creation of the characters’ universes. Through dance and poetic gestures, each character brings to life a unique world with its own rhythm and dominant mood. Each character dances with a unique aesthetic, carried by contemporary bodies, women of different ages and backgrounds. It is with these singularities that the choreographed chorus takes shape at key moments in the story.
The circular set design offers a unique and stimulating perspective, creating an immersive and captivating theatrical experience. Each member of the audience is at the very heart of the trial and sees their reflection in the person opposite them, creating a shared experience from which a group energy emanates and circulates differently.

©selenemagnolia