Creation the 12th of November 2009 at MC2:Grenoble
A punter, “half vegetable, half man”, with big ears and “absent eyes and an absinth iris” is “driven mad”, “half cuckoo” by the sassy shampoo girl, Marilou, until she disappears under the foam forever when he batters her to death with a fire extinguisher.
In his 1976 concept album L’Homme à tête de chou Serge Gainsbourg employs quite exceptional derision, freedom and musical and verbal creativity. The French singer Alain Bashung belonged to the same musical family; that of moral elegance, of artistic imperative and of a slightly despairing irony. Like Gainsbourg, his music fluctuates between gravity and gaiety. This spring, not long before his passing to “visit the other side”, he had the strength and the dignity to complete his contribution to Jean-Claude Gallotta’s choreographic interpretation of the album. His recording of the songs from L’Homme à tête de chou unite the different scenes from Marilou’s story in 1 hour and 10 minutes of musical continuity. “He did it spectacularly well,” says Jean-Claude Gallotta, “his voice was at its most powerful and filled with soul.”
In his project, Gallotta, who has a passion for experimenting with different musical genres (rock, jazz, Khmer music, Bach, Kurt Weill, Janacek, Dusapin, Lully...), rediscovers the idols from his adolescence with whom he discovered music. Under the eye of these two great masters but with the legacy of their absence, he blends their universe with his during 12 scenes using 14 dancers to create a choreographic interpretation of the disintegration, the violence and the desire in order that, in his own words, “we can have a small insight into the latent suffering that was present alongside the formidable energy of these two artists”.
