A group of teenage girls meet. Sitting on a bench, they share memories and songs, discuss their personal and collective troubles, and dream of what they could become —oscillating between boredom and panic in the highly planned architecture of their environment. Trapped amongst the remains of an urban nightmare built on earnest but misguided community housing projects, they wonder: Are there still possibilities waiting at ‘the end of the road’?

 

In this work, Cécile Bally uses sitcom-strategies to examine ‘teenage angst’ and visions of radical change at the peripheries of urban life. A maximalist scenography made of moving backdrops and an original soundtrack by the rapper Haszcara transport the audience into an imaginary space at the borders of the city. The End of the Road is a celebration of “zoner”: a French verb describing the act of “hanging out outdoors while doing nothing”. Commonly used to criticize a lifestyle associated with young people living in the French suburbs, “zoner” is here presented as a space of potentiality outside of consumerism, based on friendship and use of public space.

 

 

CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY Cécile Bally | PERFORMANCE Julia Plawgo, Sunayana Shetty, Layton Lachman, Cécile Bally | RAP (ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK) Haszcara | DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT Jonas Rutgeerts | LIGHT DESIGN Emma Juliard | SOUND DESIGN Jassem Hindi | STAGE DESIGN Pablo Ramón Benitez & Cécile Bally | COSTUMES&PROPS Sara Wendt | OUTSIDE-EYE Asaf Aharonson | PRODUCTION Ann-Christin Görtz, Valerie Terwei | PRESS Louise Trueheart

A production by Cécile Bally in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds. With the support of De School van Gaasbeek and Flutgraben Performances.

 

Photo credits on stage: Mikhail Vassiliev, Inese Kalnina, Laurent Kronental, Pierre Châtel-Innocenti, Cécile Bally

 

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                    “The stage design is fantastic; the stage elements with cut-outs of large-format architectural photographs capture the atmosphere [of life in the suburbs] well ... a very beautiful and exciting, as well as unusual perspective”

—Elisabeth Nehring for Tanzforum Berlin