© Nicole Mossoux
Cie Mossoux-Bonté

Ophelia-s

Are all women potential Ophelias under the injunction to combine weakness and beauty to find their place in the world, to make themselves desirable, and thereby exist?

How do we get away from the seduction ideal of beautiful drowning women, smiling as men pursue them with intact desire despite this proximity to death?

The production questions these ambiguities and sails from maternal waters to loss of self, from dreamlike abandonment to revulsion, from the games of female bonding to uprooting and solitude.

Projected images seem to emerge from a body of water around which four women try to reconstruct the alleged suicide of Hamlet's tender fiancée. They get caught up in the deceptive seaweed of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings, only to emerge stronger and more united.

Concept and choreography Nicole Mossoux
Direction Nicole Mossoux in collaboration with Patrick Bonté
Performance and artistic collaboration Anne-Cécile Chane-Tune, Colline Libon, Frauke Mariën and Shantala Pèpe
Original music Thomas Turine
Scenography Johan Daenen assisted by Johanna Daenen
Costumes Jackye Fauconnier assisted by Marine Stevens
Dressmaking Nicole Moris
Dressers Lydie Fourneau et Élodie Pulinckx
Make-up Nina Vial in collaboration with Valérie Locatelli
Light Patrick Bonté
Collaboration on dramaturgy Manon Dumonceaux

Film director and DP Sylvain Dufayard
First assistant director Romain Lhote
Gaffer Bert Jonckheere
Underwater operator Olivier Martin
Underwater camera assistant Alexandra Brixy
Camera assistant Laure Massiet
Apnea coach Alexis Servaes
Synchronised swimming trainer Lisa Ingenito

Sound technician Fred Miclet
Light technician Léopold de Neve
Video technician Stefano Serra
Technical backup Camillo De Lellis, Baptiste Leclère, Bartira Pereira and Luca van het Groenewoud
Interns Camille Vandevelde and Nicolas Lefebvre
Special thanks Bertrand Bodart, Apolline Collard, Ophélie Collard, Marie-Jeanne Dieudonné, Eric Dumonceaux, Marie-Paule Goblet and Agnès Legrain

Production Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté, in coproduction with Charleroi Danse – Centre chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Escher Theater – Esch-sur-Alzette and Théâtre les Tanneurs – Brussels. With support from Taxshelter.be, ING, the Federal Belgium Government Tax-Shelter, Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, dance department and from Wallonie-Bruxelles International.