Premiere August 29th-31st 2009 at La Comédie de Genève - La Bâtie - Festival de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland. Written and Directed: La Ribot. Corps-opérateur: Marie-Caroline Hominal, Delphine Rosay, La Ribot. Director of photography forthe film and Lighting Design for the stage : Daniel Demont. Set Design and Costumes: La Ribot. Music: Atom™. Music supervision and sound mixing: Clive Jenkins. Post-production: Massimiliano Simbula, Sylvie Rodriguez. Light, video and sound technicians: Stéphanie Rochat, David Scrufari. Set building: Victor Roy. Photographies of building constructions in Spain: Miguel de Guzmán. Stagehand: Pablo Jobin, Laure Fauser. Falconry Les Aigles du Léman - Jacques-Olivier Travers et Babette. Shooting Santa Caecila rehearsal room - La Comédie de Genève - Switzerland - June/July 2009. Production: Anouk Fürst, La Ribot – Genève. Coproduction Comédie de Genève - Centre dramatique (Genève), La Bâtie - Festival de Genève (Genève), Festival d’Automne à Paris, Les Spectacles vivants - Centre Pompidou (Paris), Fundação Caixa Geral de Depósitos – Culturgest (Lisbonne), Réseau Open Latitudes (Les Halles de Schaerbeek - Latitudes Contemporaines - Le Manège Maubeuge Mons / La Maison Folie - Body Mind - L’Arsenic). With the support of la Ville de Genève, la République et canton de Genève, Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, Pour-cent culturel Migros, la Corodis and the Loterie Romande. And the Fondation Leenaards and Fondation Ernst Göhner. With the collaboration of Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains. Special thanks to Luc Peter, Gilles Jobin, Edwin Culp, Mélanie Rouquier, Fafa, Olivier Devin, Florent Leduc, Pascale Pronnier, Anne et Nicola Marangon, Emilie Nana, Claude Bourgeois, Heleen Treichler, Lorena Ribera, Family Déco, Théâtre de Carouge, Oskar Gomez-Mata.
Video
Colliding together choreography and videomaking, the exuberant and unashamedly entertaining video Mariachi 17, 2009, revisits the tactic of the single take with hand-held camerawork that La Ribot first used in in Despliegue, 2000. A tightly choreographed production involving three performers and an elaborate set, Mariachi 17 teems with teasing cinematic references and ingenious spatial effects: hectic videos-within-videos and perspectival spaces-within-spaces that create a giddy sense of perpetual motion throughout its twenty-five minute running time.
Shot in the Salle Caecilia at La Comédie de Genève, Switzerland, Mariachi 17 features cinematography by Daniel Demont and sound editing by Clive Jenkins, two long-time collaborators with La Ribot. Its freewheeling soundtrack was edited from pieces by Atom™ and its set was built by La Ribot herself from material found on site, plus various large mirrors and a collection of photographs by Miguel de Guzmán showing various new theatres under construction. At times, the camera focuses down on these theatres within a theatre, setting up deceptive perspectives and spawning confusions between real and pictorial space.
Mariachi 17’s hyperactive and more-than-faintly paranoiac videos-within-videos are extracted from Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948), the 1974 disaster movie Earthquake and Sam Raimi’s 1985 comedy Crimewave, and inspiring the work are some classic cinematic experiments in trick continuity, fast editing and the single take: Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002), Zbigniew Rybczynski’s 1987 video Steps, and the celebrated crane shot in Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1968) where the camera ends up diving into a swimming pool.
Mariachi 17 was danced and filmed by Marie-Caroline Hominal, Delphine Rosay and La Ribot. In this work, the roles of dancer and camerawoman are of course one and the same, and the finished film sets up clever surprises as the camera changes hands and the camerawoman-protagonist’s identity is unexpectedly transformed. The strategy of hand-held camerawork also serves a deeper rationale for La Ribot, “humanising” the cinematic apparatus and bringing the video document closer to the experience of live dance.
Mariachi 17 stacked up one technical challenge after another: the difficulties of co-ordinating choreography and camerawork were compounded by constant, fast changes of focus, close-ups rapidly alternating with wide shots and more than eighty lighting changes. In addition, time on set was limited. The last, seventeenth, take formed the finished piece and was shot just hours before La Ribot and her company had to vacate the theatre – hence the “17” in the title.