Published on October 15, 2021 – Updated on October 15, 2021

The Cultural and associative centre (EAC) at Campus Condorcet hosted Sexe et Consentement’s creative residency in early February 2020. This association carries out prevention activities to fight sexual and gender-based violence at university and develops artistic projects to educate people about consent. It was one of the first associations to take up residence at the EAC in 2019.

For this creative residency, a choreographer, a playwright and a stage director asked themselves the following question: how could non-consensual intercourse be described in non-fiction accounts? This dance-theatre project draws on various sources: archives and personal stories, transformed into poetry and sometimes told with a dose of humour. By compiling and unleashing these words, the purpose was to question how consent is expressed and think about sexual norms by inventing new forms of theatrical art.

This creative process, which started in Argentina, continued during the residency and resulted in an end-of-residency performance of a play entitled Con-Sentiment{s}, on February 14 at the Conference centre on Campus Condorcet.

Artistic team:
  • A collective creation by Ella Hamonic (playwright), Clotilde Meeroff (stage director) and Brenda Boote Bidal (choreographer), based on a text by Ella Hamonic
  • External perspective: Amaya Lainez
  • Music and composition: Nicolas Rallis and Mariano Heler
  • Photos and videos: Antonella Casanova and Lucas Schlott
In the midst of some archives from a broken relationship, E. finds a 35 mm film: a young woman with naked breasts holds a bandoneon on her knees; behind her, a man, fully clothed and obviously much older, holds her tightly with both arms. E. wonders: is this a bad Argentinian porn movie? It’s “Last Tango in Paris,” S. tells him. The film director has just passed away, and the Libération newspaper writes: “It would be unfair to reduce Bertolucci to the consequences of this film and the collateral damage to its leading actress,” referring to her rape as a negative, external event, the price to pay to create a masterpiece in cinema history. When Maria Schneider shouted “NO”, her cry was never heard, nor her dispair, nor the lament of a woman who was sodomised in front of a camera without her consent. All those “No’s” that society does not want to hear - it was time to question their place. The place of “how, when, why: yes and no, and all the shades of “No” in between, all those things that we accept without daring or being able to escape.”

Download the presentation play
View the opening times of Sexe et consentement at the EAC
Find out more about the Sexe et consentement association
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Partners

This project forms part of Ella Hamonic’s creative project during her Master’s in literary creation at Université Paris-8. It is supported by Campus Condorcet, the French Ministry of Higher Education, Innovation and Research, the Centre National de la Danse (CND) studios in Pantin, the Maison de l’Argentine and Buda Coutrai (Belgium).
A dance-theatre production by Sexe et Consentement - Co-founders: Eléonore Nouel and Ella Hamonic.
 

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