Our INCREDIBLE Date Night

Knowing we were here for just a couple of days of the Festival d'Avignon, we bought tickets to the opening production which began at 10 PM.

Following a much needed afternoon nap, Steve and I spent our pre-theater time at the über awesome Maison des Vins' summer setup, the Bar À Vins.
"For 17 years now, the Côtes du Rhône Wine Bar has been delighting the taste buds of thousands of festival-goers and is in full swing throughout the month of July."

Live music, fun foods, free-flowing wine, and personable winemakers all combined to make yet another magical moment for us in Avignon.


Steve's favorite wine of the night was Johan by Domaine Moun Pantai. By the way, this is Johan, the varietal's namesake and the son of the vintner. Cool!


When we toured the Palace of the Popes, in the beginning of the month, I showed this venue sans people. Tonight it transformed to a sold out extravaganza and we were there for it all.
This was the premiere of DÄMON by Angélica Liddell and we were absolutely giddy and completely clueless as to what we were to experience.

Just walking through the Palace's doors created intense excitement.
DÄMON: El funeral de Bergman was a completely new production acted in Spanish (with some Swedish). We were warned that "Some scenes in this show may offend the public. It is not recommended for those under 16."
"Angélica Liddell, the Spanish artist, honors the opening of the 78th edition by celebrating Ingmar Bergman. Like the Swedish director, she calls on the ghosts, demons, and dreams that haunt us. She channels Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, who wrote the script for his funeral as if it were his final masterpiece, and takes him at his word. The great Spanish performer invites us to gaze on our buried fantasies and unspoken terrors, until we have to face the final demon: not Death, but Vanity."

"Her show shines a light on what one dare not speak of at dinner parties: this fiery discourse which finds refuge on the stage, and which she calls the pornography of the soul. With DÄMON, she dreams of a theatre with the power of religion, where everyone would pray for our collective salvation."
For two hours we were mostly yelled at in Spanish. Thankfully, there were subtitles, shown on the Palace walls, which added an understanding that was truly needed as we would have been at a complete loss. This was the most unique experience Steve and I have ever had. And while not enjoyable in the way we normally attend the theater, it was an exceptional performance and incredibly thought provoking/mind opening. It has left us with a haunted feeling and a great deal to discuss. WOW. What a fabulous night which did not find us in bed until 1:30 AM Sunday morning!

For a more explanation of this experience, read the review by Olivier Frégaville-Gratian d’Amore which begins with, "DÄMON, the self-suicidal ego trip of Angélica Liddell. Opening the Avignon Festival, the sultry Spaniard lives up to her reputation. In this Bergmanian funeral, she confesses her anxieties, awakens her ghosts and spares no one, even if it borders on self-caricature."

The review ends with, "Obsessed by her age, the fear of sinking into indulgence, she seeks life behind death. A harsh, thunderous litany, endless logorrhea, Angélica Liddell,  like herself, confronts each of the spectators with their own excrement. From Bach to the Pet Shop Boys, she dances on our prejudices, our preconceived ideas, our inabilities to see beyond the end of our noses. As brilliant as she is distressing, the Madrid queen has not finished dividing. With her, it is undeniable, art is still alive!"
"That's the magic of art and the magic of theatre:
it has the power to transform an audience,
an individual, or en masse, to transform them
and give them an epiphanic experience that changes their life,
opens their hearts and their minds and the way they think."
-Brian Stokes Mitchell

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Avignon's Festival Season Has Begun!

Part of the excitement of our timing of our month long sojourn in the South of France was being here for the 78th edition of the Festival d'Avignon. This 3-week-long event consists of 40 shows, with over 400 performances, entertaining over 130,000 spectators.

The day before the premiere, the look of the town has totally changed. Show posters are literally EVERYWHERE!
It definitely gives one the opportunity to learn what's happening around town.

To our delight, there were Festival pre-events to the Festival and we found one at the very amazing Bibliothèque Ceccano, an impressive 14th century fortified residence.
A solo performance by the incredibly talented cellist Emmanuel Cremer was like nothing we had ever heard.



"Under the aegis of Homer and his sirens, Emmanuel Cremer, delivers to us Cinq chants d'Athènes (5 songs of Athens) which cross time as well as space. This cello solo takes us into a very personal reading of an Odyssey that is built with a bow. The sea is sometimes rough, insistent, always on the verge of breaking (Infini sans terre), sometimes it is the calm that occurs at the peak of the storm and the song of the cello becomes one with the elements (Deli) but the destination is always sure. Cremer's Athenian reading is strangely between two worlds, Ancient and Modern." By the way, he really played as quickly as the image above.
After being blown away by a cellist, we dined on Rue des Teinturiers, a picturesque street paved with cobblestones. "It is appreciated in summer for the freshness that emanates from the canal (from the Sorgue) and the shade offered by its majestic plane trees. During the Festival, many cafés and restaurants offer a pleasant wait for the theater plays to begin. From morning until late in the evening, you can enjoy this exceptional atmosphere, whether you are a spectator or a simple onlooker. Discovering the history of this picturesque street and at the same time, that of its inhabitants, is to discover the entire history of Avignon..." There truly is history everywhere here!
For UNO fans, how cool is this order number?

And how is this for a musical interlude?
In addition to the Festival d'Avignon, there is the OFF Festival with more than 1,600 shows in 141 theaters all over town. A spontaneous creative endeavor born in 1966, around the Avignon Festival (which is also known as IN), the OFF Festival is one of the largest live performance festivals in the world. What's fun about OFF is the fact that its stars wander the streets, promoting themselves. This gal was a riot. The town is electric with all the excitement.

While meandering about, we were invited to attend a free performance at the very cool Episcène Theater. We were so glad we went. Oh my gosh!
Lève Toi stars Sarina, a blind Belgian singer, author and composer, who has had an atypical career path worth sharing. According to her webpage, "Since she was little, she feared being reduced by blindness and put in a box. It was her grandmother who gave her the first key to getting out of it: music. Today, she gives us a brand new show, something between stand-up and music."
The theater is very intimate and when it was time for Sarina to take the stage, the house lights were turned off leaving us completely in the dark. This introduction to our own blindness was a powerful message. Wow.

Through storytelling, Sarina combines historical and autobiographical anecdotes, sharing her personal stories and those of legendary singers who have also broken the glass ceiling. From Nina Simone to Billie Eilish, Josephine Baker and the Lebanese Fairouz. She pays tribute to those who have changed the world through their music. While we didn't understand exactly what she shared, we certainly got the message.
"Avignon's Got It Going On!"

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A Return to L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue

We returned to this daring village nestled along the Sorgue River, with its fresh emerald green waters. L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is dotted with mossy paddle wheels, vestiges of the textile industry which ensured the prosperity of the city





We had returned to experience its living cultural heritage: the Provençal market. On Thursday and Sunday mornings, crowds flock to the streets of the city, the scene of a colorful market which offers tasty vegetables, cheeses and regional wines, among numerous other products offered at the merchants' stalls.


Another destination was the Villa Datris for its current exhibit, FAIRE CORPS.
The 14th exhibition, hosted in this beautiful 19th century house, explores various visions of the body through the works of 60 established and emerging artists, both French and international. In the Foundation's human-scale spaces and in its gardens, we explored various facets of this classic but relevant subject.

Instead of doing a deep dive on each piece, I'll let you admire some of our more favorite works. Keep in mind "FAIRE CORPS critiques the transcendent physical body, a central site to capitalism, along with the body's role in social injustice, immigration, bioethics, cybernetics, wars, and contagions, as well as the body as a militating ecological force."

In addition, "Since the 19th century, and in keeping with profound mutations in society, representations of the "classical" body and the ideal nude have been increasingly called into question. In this exhibition, we explore the body as an object of concern for racialized, feminist, and gendered representations."
I have been a fan of Niki de Saint Phalle and was excited that so many of her pieces were here. "Women's bodies have long been subjected to a heteronormative gaze. With their focus on interiority, artists such as Niki de Saint Phalle propelled female representation into new terrain. In liberating women's voices, some artists focus on parts of the body traditionally controlled by the male gaze, while others denounce the emptiness and commodification of stereotypical female representation."







In 2010, we spent a month in Charleston and went to an exhibit showcasing the work of Nick Cave. What a coincidence to see him again here, in France. His Soundsuits are weirdly intriguing, wearable mixed-media sculptures which incorporate every material imaginable to make sounds unique to each garment. Here's a video to know more about the artist and his unique work. Wow!


A key member of the New Realism movement of the 60s, César created his first self-portrait Le Pouce (The Thumb) in 1965. That work launched a lifelong pattern of revisiting the symbol, experimenting with materials and sizes, developing the sculpture into a recognizable emblem. Hmmm.
Interestingly, we had the opportunity to admire one of César's Thumbs when we were in Paris in 2011. Another strange art related coincidence.




"The body is in the world as the heart is in the organism:
it keeps the visible spectacle continuously alive,
animating and nourishing it from within.”
-Maurice Merleau-Pont
After the art museum we visited an art gallery. We fell in love with Myriam Louvel Paoli's wire sculptures.
She wrote about her work, "I tangle the wires, the shapes and their ghosts of shadows... I create "objects" for meditation, for questions. I remake objects from the world in wire... to gain a foothold, understand, incorporate. The wire traces. The wire draws in space and sculpts the void. It questions the relationship between form and content. How does it hold? What does it hold on to? The important thing is that it holds, that something holds. Sometimes an object finds his answer, or his question, in another, later, which pushes me to move forward. At first, I let come with the least possible awareness what inhabits me. Destabilizing inner adventure, the interesting being what escapes me. In a second time, sometimes, it makes sense in my story. But it only really comes to fruition, in my opinion, when it touches someone else and moves something in them..." They certainly moved something in me. Wow.
As for this piece, I only include it because I was able to adorn it with a sunflower. I left my mark on L'Isle as it has on me.

L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is a town historically marked by wool and silk work. It was able to take advantage of all its natural resources (water and its driving force, wool, thistle, madder, olive oil, etc.), which its inhabitants developed by equipping themselves with water wheels, up to 66 in its heyday, which fueled mills, spinning machines, later mechanical looms.
Of all the business established on La Sorgue, only one remains. It is at the heart of this environment favorable to the textile industry that in 1808, a duo installed a parlor mill on the banks of the river, and began creating woolen sheets and blankets. By 1900, five integrated factories and numerous more specialized workshops still produced wool blankets, Avignon rugs, sheets for clothing and technical fabrics for stationery. Now 215 years later, only Brun de Vian-Tiran continues its activity, for which 8 generations have succeeded one another in an uninterrupted manner, perpetuating this unique manufacture in France.





To wander around villages near and far. To discover uniqueness just around a corner. To hug a tree who is as old as America. Is it any wonder we travel? This stay in France has exposed us to such an array of delights!

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