Burning is both documentary circus and choreographic poetry. A desire to put the individual back at the centre and to use a language close to collage. A remarkable work of body, voice and spirit that witnesses to the insidious way in which suffering at work takes hold.
Trapped in the space of the representation, a character evolves, constrained by his environment. He tries to remain seated or standing, to line up cardboard boxes, in contact with a space where everything is tilting, gradually erasing any possible horizon.
At the same time, Laurence Vielle’s voice-over spells out the words of a slow inner combustion: breathlessness, restless rhythms, fragments of testimonies.
Here the body evolves in resonance with the words, the acrobatic act blends with the video language. Graphs… percentages… testimonies… a battered body… depict a world of labour, profit, capital and sick over-consumption, where the human being has become a commodity, where meaning is lost.
« Only one performer, Julien Fournier, and a text, just and strong, on burn-out, written and read [in voice-over], soberly, by Laurence Vielle. Burning thus brings us back to the daily reality of millions of individuals “burned out” by a society that is solely productivist. Julien Fournier illustrates the story with almost nothing, a treadmill that allows him to portray, sometimes with humour, the imbalance. And a series of cardboard boxes whose simple handling transports us into the mechanical universe of Charlie Chaplin in « modern-times”. As strong as it is simple. Intelligence and virtuosity are better than long speeches. »
CHRISTIAN JADE – RTBF
“At the height of expectations, with a sensitive intelligence, solidly documented, BURNING demonstrates, with rare acrobatics, minimalist choreography, scenography and video, how much the contemporary circus, can mix genres, defend a purpose and reinvent itself. »
LAURENCE BERTELS – La libre Belgique
