At what point does madness become madness? Where is the boundary between the normal and the insane? Who decides that? Inspired by Georges Didi-Huberman’s book, Invention de l’hystérie: Charcot and the photographic iconography of the Salpêtrière, this dance and flute duet explores the theatrical and visual dimension of Charcot’s study of hysterics. Taking on board the idea that the neurologist’s scientific research on female patients forced them to generate symptoms at very precise moments so that they could be studied and photographed, the two artists have chosen the stage as a place for their wanderings and dialogue, moving together while knowing that they are being observed. Improvised, the movements and sounds weave sensitive links, responding to each other, mingling until it is no longer possible to distinguish which is influencing the other. Through this common language, these two women express their own intimate madness.

“Hysteria was, at every moment in its history, a pain forced to be invented,
as spectacle and as image; it went so far as to invent itself (…)”.
Invention of hysteria, Georges Didi-Huberman