In WALLFLOWERING the choreographer Iris Heitzinger and the actress Françoise Boillat embark on a quest for female identity and the construction of social gender roles. The inspiration for this piece lies in the work of the three photographers and media artists Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman und Chantal Michel, who in their own work have questioned the role of women in society.

This Austrian – Swiss coproduction is the first co-creation by Iris Heitzinger and Françoise Boillat, who have been collaborating in various works since 2010. WALLFLOWERING is an exploration of self-perception in everyday life, the expression of our own femininity and the difficulty to life up to or escape social norms and the expectations, which derive from them. In a society where image, appearance and impact on our surroundings have gained disproportionate importance we are often obliged to present and represent ourselves. The term wallflower refers almost exclusively to a women (hardly ever to a men) who doesn’t express her sexual and otherwise positive traits accurately, or who presumably might not have them, and therefore seems inconspicuous to the other sex.

In WALLFLOWERING the two performers Heitzinger und Boillat explore the nuances between the two extremes of the hardly-perceived wallflower and the all-attention-attracting diva and investigate in a playful manner the sometimes glamorous and pleasurable and sometimes almost grotesque masquerade, which womanliness entails. They transform from one female stereotype to the next with the intention to metaphorically undress womanliness itself layer by layer and question its symbolic representations. 

Concept, artistic direction and performance: Iris Heitzinger and Françoise Boillat 

Artistic advising: Guillaume Béguin, Dante Murillo 

Music: André Décosterd 

Light design: Peter Thalhamer 

Costume and make-up: Christine Hinterkörner 

Rehearsal assistant: Aurore Faivre

Photography: Bettina Frenzel, Bernhard Müller

Video/Editting trailer: Juri Walcher, Dominik Tamegger

A production by Verein kunstHupfer/ei (AT) and Cie du Gaz (CH) in coproduction with ARGEkultur Salzburg & Centre de culture ABC / La Chaux-de-Fonds

PREMIERE:

8th & 10th of march 2017

20h

ARGEkultur, Salzburg

Austria

17th - 19th of march 2017

Centre de culture ABC, La Chaux-de-Fonds

Switzerland