Building festival: these artists that we are delighted to (re) discover

Only a few days before the launch of the 49^e Edition of La Bâtie – Festival de Genève. And among the more than 50 program events, there is a lot to do and do. Each edition of the Geneva meeting in September is an opportunity to see or review the creations of dozens of artists from here or elsewhere. Because it is impossible to highlight all the confirmed creators or the succession that make up the 2025 poster, here is a completely subjective selection of appointments not to be missed.

Yasmine Hugonnet

Danse Vaudois dancer and choreographer, this radical artist has fruitful relationships with the theater of Vidy, which she visited several times, notably for “Chro not gi lime“And more recently” Ventriloque Cabaret Cabaret “. But his talent also carries her on the side of the Venice Dance Biennial. For the building, she officiates this time with her choreographer cap by overseeing nine dancers from the Ballet du Grand Théâtre for “1000 & 1 BPM_odyssée”, as the festival opened. Hurry up, the places are rare. (ADG)

Marlene Monteiro Freitas

Theater In “nôt” – “night” in Creole -, Marlene Monteiro Freitas reactivates the motif of “a thousand and one nights” by transposing it into contemporary issues. The narration as a survival exercise, like a sheherazade which must captivate the sultan to stay alive, until the next night. Staks of love, war, travel jostle in the “storyteller” of the whimsical choreographer who opened the last Avignon festival With this breathtaking spectacle which also translates into the gesture this weaving of words which generate, meet and contradict each other. (BSE)

Blue dog

Hip-hop The strength of a blue dog is to succeed in captivating your audience using its introspective texts. The Geneva rapper does not hesitate to claim punk roots, and assumes protest music. Her Last album, “We will never die”, is the perfect example. Between nostalgia and darkness, he sings his desire to live through melodious titles. All accompanied on stage with his live band of four musicians.

With titles like “Renaud”, “Blue Jean” or “New York”, a blue dog tells the daily disillusions of a thirty -something, taking care to add a dose of hope. He never forgets to slide references to his city in Geneva. Recently signed in the Lausanne label Two Gentlemen, a Blue Dog is a real artist. He is also expressed with the art of tattooing. Accustomed to scenes from French -speaking Switzerland, the rapper also performed on the stage of Club Tent this summer in Paléo. At the building, he is playing the same evening as Valaisanne Milla and the Genevan al-Walid. (APA)

Living Smile Vidya

Performance Transgender activist from India, and moreover the first trans woman to officially obtain a change of sex in the country, Living Smile Vidya has been scouring European scenes since she was forced to take refuge in Switzerland in 2018. Her history has also been adapted to the cinema. Her only on the scene, between dance and singing, travels the fights to which she dedicated her life. An almost documentary fresco. (ADG)

Cirque trottola

Cirque We love the French duo – Boudu, the clown, and Titoune, the acrobat of Geneva origin – which has been holding the Trottola circus for more than twenty years, because each of its creations succeeds in mixing with the traditional art of the circus of poetry outbursts which always end up taking us. In Geneva, the couple returns with “Strano”, a little gem that crosses between absurd, strange – strangein Italian – and acrobatic vertigo. This musical and visual spectacle, seen in Vidy last fall, derailly derailed according to the circus numbers and machinery that gets carried away. Go for it! (GCO)

The gestures that save from Boris Charmatz

Choreography “Au bor-le-corps” testifies to a beautiful artistic fidelity to his past. The play which opened in 1993 the career of Boris Charmatz, a French dancer and choreographer then aged 20, remained alive for more than thirty years. The building therefore presents this duo with Dimitri Chamblas, who has taken some wrinkles but paradoxically preserves over time the strength of the first times. The leader of non-dance, now director of the Tanztheater of Wuppertal of Pina Bausch, also arrives in Geneva with “10,000 gestures”, another of his past, more recent creations, but teeming with countless movements and postures. A summary of Charmatz’s art which also comes to dialogue with the public after a screening of its first choreographic films (organic cinema, carouge, its Sept. 13, 11 a.m.). (BSE)

Dan ACERS

Installation Based in Geneva, Dan Acher is both an artist and activist, his art being for him a “generator of change through local and global communities”. Using the great outdoors as workshops, his creations are monumental, like “Breathe”, this giant dome which had been installed on the Plaine de Plainpalais in May 2024inviting spectators to breathe together. In the same idea of ​​collective experience, Dan Acher creates the “Secrets” buildings, a cathartic public ceremony inviting to burn its unavowable confidences. (ADG)

Nina Negri

Theater Choreographer and Italian director based in Geneva, Nina Negri is a multidisciplinary artist, picking in cinema, theater and performance. After several creations at the Théâtre de Vidy, including “under influence” in 2019 (that we had loved) and “Forest violence” in 2024, she created a piece specially dedicated to classrooms, “Zozios revolt”. For the building, the artist features a solo for the actor Dylan Poletti, “Puppy-Play” and, a creation co-produced by the festival, “Hapax or immediate appearance”. To absolutely discover. (ADG)

Félicien lia

Chanson Renewal that beats stowling where it feels good to hurt … Félicien Lia grew up near the Café du Soleil in Signélégier in the Jura, a high meeting between artists from all stripes, anarchists, poets and Jazzmen. His untamed songs give this heritage a boost. “All very sad” tells us his latest EP knowingly wobbly and well struck, not to say impact, where we can hear echoes of Dick Annegarn or Mathieu Boogaerts. Between bossa of melancholic lumberjack and groove of agitated jar, the singer marks his difference. A concert at the orangery in augmented formation for the one whose last single is called “Les Oranges”. (BSE)

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