A dance & digital arts creation

3 booths. 3 small worlds. 3 borders. 3 dancers — 2 women, 1 man.
The digital system interacts with their movements, which modulate sound, video and light.
An immersive installation where the audience moves freely.

Stories of borders

What separates us? What connects us?
How does a border let relationship pass through?
A story of borders. Between worlds, between cultures, between self and others, between self and self.
Inside and outside.
Cocoon or prison. Constraining frame or limit to be crossed. It confines, or it makes relationship possible.
It leads to conflict, or to recognition.
The ambivalence of the border: respect it or push it back.
Crossing a border is never easy — every displacement is an exile.

Sound-sensitive booths

Each booth has its own identity, its own visual and sonic signature, its own singular, ambivalent borders.
The booths are open, making relationship with the other possible.

The skin booth has soft, elastic walls. The dancer pushes against the skin as if pushing back the limits of the unknown. It invites experimentation, at the risk of sometimes getting lost. It is the site of real-time video.
Its capture system consists of 2 cameras.

The plexiglass walls of the plexi booth form a rigid outer frame. It restricts movement, but offers a stable, reassuring surface to lean on. It is sonic, percussive: sensors pick up the vibrations of the material. The dancer's movements generate sound and light.

The dress booth has no walls, but a dress fastened to its base. The dancer is held back by her costume, which always draws her back to the centre of the booth. Both cocoon and prison, this is the booth of attachment — to territory, to traditions, to one's mother tongue. Its capture system is an accelerometer-type sensor that links sounds to the dancer's movements.

The audience is immersed in the installation. They can move freely around the booths, form a particular relationship with one booth, or step back to take in all three. Together, the three booths create a space of dialogue: Cabines is an invitation to exchange, and to know — and recognise — the other.

A participatory programme

The company has developed a flexible participatory protocol to adapt Cabines to each new territory. It invites host venues to meet their neighbours ahead of the performance.

The programme offers several possible entry points:
// Meeting: group encounters between the artistic team, local residents and presenting partners.
// Bearing witness: one-on-one meetings to gather residents' testimonies about their conception of the border. Some of these words are woven into the soundtrack (creating an additional scene). Others can be played in a sound installation alongside the performance.
// Experimenting: a hands-on workshop with the digital system.
// Dancing: the scene created specifically for the venue can be performed by the 3 Cabines dancers and/or by amateur dancers. In the latter case, 2 days of rehearsal beforehand are required.