Nine details about good and bad government

Gaëlle Bourges and Marco Villari discuss the show Warding off fear

Warding off fear is based on an Italian fresco painted by A. Lorenzetti in 1338 - "The Effects of Good and Bad Government" - analyzed in the eponymous book* by historian Patrick Boucheron, from whom the show takes its title. The choreographic piece is a way of bringing back to life, through the medium of live performance, the ancient images that are, in this case, veritable political propaganda. By describing precisely what we see in the painting - thus creating a descriptive language, and by physically entering into the attitudes of the figures represented - thus inventing gestures, the show relies on the performers' ability to create a faithful, yet open, vision of a fixed image that never ages. Marco Villari and Gaëlle Bourges provide a few tools for understanding the processes used to recall the Italian fresco, exploring the images of bad and good government in nine details.

* Conjurer la peur, Sienne 1338 - Essai sur la force politique des images by Patrick Boucheron, published by Editions du Seuil in 2013