Transitions linking Death across centuries: Invisibili by Aurélien Bory

Waiting for Invisibili, Les Abbesses - Paris © Mehmet Kerem Özel, 15.01.2024

At the beginning of the piece, the thick black frame with three sides, which was lying on the floor of the stage, gradually rose backwards, lifted the cloth lying on the floor attached to it and gradually revealed the image printed on the cloth to us, the audience. When the frame was erected, the Triumph of Death stood before us in all its splendour, measuring 6 metres by 6.5 metres. 

Originally exhibited in a museum in Palermo, the Triumph of Death, whose painter is unknown, dates from the 1440s and is one of the most impressive works of medieval art in terms of content, colour and composition. In the centre of the fresco, which probably depicts the plague known as the Black Death, which entered the ports of Sicily and ravaged the entire European continent about 100 years before it was painted, there is a gigantic Death in the form of a skeleton. 

Death rides a galloping horse, also in the form of a skeleton, and shoots arrows at the people around him. There are also many human figures in the painting (34 of them, I later learnt), some lying dead under the horse's feet, others having a good time, dancing and chatting, walking their dogs as the arrows have not yet hit them.

As soon as our encounter with the painting is over, a black man enters the stage from the right; while describing the figures in the painting in the first person and in English, he poses for us with gestures, successively copying the postures of the figures in the painting. Then the painting suddenly fluttered, the man disappeared and three women appeared. The women copy the postures of the group figures in the painting. The painting fluttered again; suddenly the three women disappeared and a woman in a grey dress appeared. In the next wave, the three women reappear on stage; they force the woman in grey to stand in the positions of certain figures in the painting. In a later scene, the woman in grey is lifted from the ground and enveloped by the painting; it is as if the Death in the painting has reached out with its arms and taken her into the bosom of the horse. Then she too suddenly disappears in mid-air.

In another scene, one of the women speaks in Italian, in short sounds, words or sentences, to all the figures in the painting, including the dogs; whichever figure she speaks to, that figure is illuminated by its outline. After a while, the almost simultaneous vocalisation of the 34 figures becomes a cacophony. 

Throughout the show, the voices and live music are one of the most important elements in creating the atmosphere. The fact that, in the very first scene, the melody played live on the saxophone on the left side of the stage as the cloth rises is transformed into the hoofbeats of a galloping horse while the painting stands in its entirety in front of us, suggests from the very first moment that an extraordinary soundscape awaits us in this show. In the scenes that follow, the wind-like sound that underscores every movement of the cloth, the saxophone's interpretation of Bach's melody that accompanies one of the dance sequences, and Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, played and sung by the black performer on harmonium and accompanied by female dancers whose refrain gradually becomes a scream, continue to contribute to the dark atmosphere of the show.

The piece lasts about 70 minutes and is based around the Triumph of Death painting. It is called Invisibili and created by Aurélien Bory. 

Bory (1972) is an inspiring director and choreographer who, with Compagnie 111, which he founded in Toulouse in 2000, has over the years developed a unique physical theatre that combines the disciplines of theatre, circus, dance, visual arts and music, using illusion and stage mechanics as creatively as the movement of bodies in his shows. Bory is a prolific and versatile artist in the field of visual and performing arts. He has a great variety of works; from astonishing examples of physical theatre such as Plan B (2003) and Plus ou moins l'infini (2005), created with Phil Soltanoff, to special series for female dancers (Plexus with Kaori Ito (2012), aSH with Shantala Shivalingappa (2018)), from stage- or site-specific installations to innovative and unconventional but never losing the essence of historical and contemporary operas, such as Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice (2018) for the Opéra Comique (Paris) and Dafne (2023) for the Theatre Athénée.

Like Pina Bausch, who created Palermo Palermo and staged it at Teatro Biondo in 1989 after spending time in Palermo with her dancers following an invitation, Bory spent time in the city and created Invisibili following an invitation from Pamela Villoresi, artistic director of Teatro Biondo, in 2020.

At the beginning and at the end of Invisibili, Bory does not seem to neglect to nod to Bausch and Palermo Palermo. Bory reverses the idea of the wall that Bausch used in Palermo Palermo: Bausch begins Palermo Palermo by tearing down the wall that completely covers the stage portal backwards, towards the stage, and has his dancers perform the whole show on the large grey bricks scattered on the stage. Bory, on the other hand, as I have already explained, begins Invisibili by lifting a material, a cloth, which is placed on the floor on its back side from the beginning, revealing a wall, but a flexible, moving, fluctuating wall of cloth, behind which he reveals to us his inspiration, that is, the entire painting.

In the final sequence, Bory places the painting on the floor, this time with its front side, and just as Bausch's dancers move on the broken bricks, Bory moves his performers on the painting: The dancers lie on top of the figures in the painting, imitating them, while black and white moving images are projected on the back wall of the stage, in which the black performer's camera records them and his own face live; at the end, the skull of Death freezes.

Bory establishes the geographical link between medieval painting and the present through the idea of death at the centre of the painting. In one of the key scenes of the show, a real boat, similar to the one used by African refugees to cross the Mediterranean and reach Sicily, emerges from behind the painting; both physically and semantically, the boat replaces the horse on which Death rides in the painting.

In a later scene, while the black performer struggles for life and death inside the boat, the female dancers are transformed into the Mediterranean waves that capsize the boat, representing the most tragic reality of humanity today. In the final scene of the show, the air inside the boat, which is being sucked out by the weight of the bodies of performers, who are swaying very slowly on the boat as if they were passengers on a boat sinking to the bottom of the sea, allows the automatically programmed music to play on the harmonium, which has just been connected to the boat by a large air pipe.

This is Bory's theatrically elaborate and meticulously designed theatrical set-up, which is as emotionally heartbreaking as it is critically thoughtful. The African raw material that provides Europe's wealth and pleasure is precisely the most basic element that gives life to man and prevents him from living in its absence: Air. While Europe leaves Africa, whose air it "sucks" and whose raw materials it exploits, no air to live in, it continues its own life in prosperity.

Applause for Invisibili, Les Abbesses - Paris © Mehmet Kerem Özel, 15.01.2024

On a completely naked and black stage, Bory has created an impressive work that establishes visual and semantic as well as literal physical transitions and relationships between the 15th century and the present, with a small team of six performers (Chris Obehi, a Nigerian singer who has been living in Palermo as a refugee for several years, four dancers from Palermo, Valeria Zampardi, Blanca Lo Verde, Maria Stella Pitaresi, Arabella Scalisi and Gianni Gebbia, a Sicilian saxophonist), a minimalist set consisting of a 6 x 6.5 metre frame that moves backwards and forwards at different speeds, and the atmospheric designs of Joan Cambon (music) and Arno Veyrat (lighting), with whom he has worked for years.

Produced by Bory's company Compagnie 111 and Teatro Biondo, and co-produced by the Théâtre de la Ville Paris and Teatro Piemonte Europa, Invisibili, after its world premiere in Palermo at the beginning of the 2023-24 season, was in Paris in January 2024, will be in Turin in April and will continue its world tour in the 2024-25 season.

[The original version of this article in Turkish was published in unlimited.]