Alban Richard presents this show, cre­ated with can­cer sur­viv­ors, for the For­um ‘Cre­at­ing adequate health con­di­tions’. A way for them to phys­ic­ally engage in poet­ic vis­ion, under­scored by songs and memories. 

Song­book is a piece which is a way of rehab­il­it­at­ing the body after can­cer. Con­ceived as a col­lec­tion of sung and spoken por­traits by some fif­teen can­cer sur­viv­ors, the piece was cre­ated dur­ing the work­shops organ­ized with the Centre Fran­çois Bac­lesse in Caen and their Wel­come and Inform­a­tion Ser­vice, with the sup­port of Drac Nor­man­die (Cul­ture-Santé). It was an oppor­tun­ity for them to ques­tion their exper­i­ence dur­ing a par­tic­u­lar stage in their jour­ney, this some­times vague zone between dis­ease and heal­ing, when med­ic­al pro­to­cols and super­vi­sion ease. The body is healed but it is no longer the same. Over the course of six week­ends under the super­vi­sion of cho­reo­graph­ers Max Fossati and Alban Richard, along with coun­sel­lor Nath­alie Schul­mann (who spe­cial­izes in func­tion­al phys­ic­al ana­lys­is through dance), a form emerges based on a selec­tion of songs picked out by par­ti­cipants, which recall spe­cif­ic memor­ies and emo­tions. Each par­ti­cipant has selec­ted texts, per­son­al memen­tos or his­tor­ic­al facts, to make Song­book a col­lec­tion of mov­ing and invig­or­at­ing por­traits where can­cer isn’t the main top­ic but a com­mon point and a new start.