Le Salon Revisited

Created in 2004, Le Salon is a darkly playful portrait of a family in decline, where four generations confront loss, inherited trauma, and unspoken secrets. Now, more than 20 years later, we pay another visit to this living room that became a mirror of private and collective consciousness. On stage, we observe a once-wealthy family struck by a financial, material, physical, and psychological decline. The performance first delves into the buried taboos between the family members. Through the simultaneous presence of four generations, the invisible inheritance, passed down from ancestor to their children, becomes tangible through movement. This unconscious family legacy also brought the creators, as parents, back to a primal fear: the fear of losing a child. Gradually, this becomes a central axis of the project: a story of a couple who loses what is most precious to them, and exploring how they survive the aftermath. They stumble between collapse and resilience, where sorrow and unexpected laughter coexist. Finally, the space itself plays its own role: as a silent witness, the living room is where everyday life accumulates over time. It stores gestures, routines, and conflicts that outlive their inhabitants, becoming a family archive over time. 20+ years after its creation, this salon is still building on the past and lays bare a hard question: are we learning from the past or are we endlessly repeating history? Le Salon in the press“With themes and glimpses of loss and decline in the most ‘normal’ of lives,it maintains a throat-tightening sense of melancholy, whilst offering aparallel sense of dark humour and even hope.”— Anne-Marie Peard, Melbourne International Arts Festival review about Le Salon"Told through a combination of theatrical performance, dance, movementand song, the production offers a form of total theatre we see only rarely onthe British stage."– The Sunday Herald about Le Salon“Like a delirious puff, the dance wells up with a brutal virtuosity.”— Le Monde about Le Salon