The second piece of work on entertainment … and disappearing.

It is a funny piece, with scathing humour. There are the usual characters and codes you would expect to find in this genre of show, but everything is out of place. An open appeal is made to the audience’s credulity; a sort of joyous threat seems to hover over the whole thing. All the numbers have something to do with disappearing. We are inviting the realm of pretence here: a world out of step with our own that does not seek to imitate the known, but simply refer to it.
If the «Great Disappearance», in its final form, means death, then the small disappearances presented here stimulate our desire for absence. Absence of appearance, of adults, of the weight that we have created… and of long personal lists…
Have you never felt like a rabbit frozen in the headlights of a car, paralysed by the explosion of light, hoping that no one has noticed you just as everything is bearing down on you?

In a magic trick, a real one, the moment of reappearance, of resurrection, is called the «conjuring». It has something in common with the splendour of a ceremonial uniform. And without this grandiose moment, the trick is worth nothing.
I believe that when we almost disappear, the reappearing has nothing special about it. It can be funny or moving, but also brutally plunges us once again into whatever we were absent from.
And perhaps the real magic trick is the fact that we continue.

Philippe Saire

Dis-appear: Cease to appear, become invisible. We’ve all dreamed of it. Here, we can see it on stage in a number pieces, knocked together in the same way we tinker with life, as well as we can, with all our awkwardness and our desire to believe. If these situations, these strange absurdities give rise to humour, our laughter also translates our tenderness towards these characters that are so like us.
Philippe Saire, choreographer

The playful spirit of Philippe Saire
(…) “Il faut que je m’absente” is the second in a trilogy of shows on the same subject: a revisiting of the codes of entertainment, particularly those relating to the circus and magic, and which also distorts them with a steely sense of irony, some frankly ferocious humour and also a good deal of tenderness. The piece serves up generous portions of laughter and comic situations, whilst managing to touch a very sensitive chord.
(…) The real challenge, therefore, is knowing how to dig beneath the lightness of the surface. The company succeed in this with great joy. The piece brings all our incoherence to the surface, our anxieties, all the things that hold us back, that bind us. The tone is continuously out of step, providing a kind of zone of liberty which allows each of us to experience our own sensations in relation to the language of dance.
If the show takes on the form of a series of apparently unconnected numbers, short twisted and quite original scenarios, in compliance with the codes of the ‘review’ tradition, it makes no sacrifices in terms of unity. Philippe Saire brings back movement and attitudes and uses them to weave a weft inspired by his playful and profoundly impertinent spirit.
La Liberté (CH), Elisabeth Haas, 8 November 2008

A close escape
In Lausanne, Philippe Saire is staging his second work dedicated to the world of illusion. In his magician’s hat, comedy, the need to escape and a few white rabbits. (…) By mixing reality and illusion, Saire shows he is a real troublemaker.
Le Courrier (CH), Dominique Hartmann, 8 November 2008

• Disappearing declined
  “Il faut que je m’absente“, Philippe Saire’s second creation at Sévelin 36, amuses and unsettles our perceptions. (…) For his new creation, produced in collaboration with all his dancers, the Lausanne-based choreographer engages in a perpetual game of contrasts by means of a series of powerful and precise movements. 24 Heures (CH), Corinne Jaquiéry, 7 November 2008
  Saire, turning pleasure on its head
  (…) Right from the very first minutes, the response is there on stage, simple and limpid: in the midst of the malaise, in the subtle game of creaking and groaning, which forces us to broaden our way of looking and obliges the audience to reflect beyond the images of pleasure that are provided by the performance. (…) The tenuous limit between voluntary flight and manipulation. Pleasure and violence. In this context, the choreography excels. The images it creates on stage are powerful in the sense that they intrigue as much as they unsettle. (…) Without resource to language and the rigidity of words, “Il faut que je m’absente” opens up a multitude of horizons of reflection. And establishes beyond any doubt, with power and panache, the possible association between pleasure and the search for meaning. The disappearance of the spectator in entertainment is not inevitable. *
  L’Hebdo (CH), Anne-Sylvie Sprenger, 6 November 2008