FRANÇOISE SERGY

 

Dance was Françoise’s first love. Born and brought up in Switzerland, she came to London in 1975 to study contemporary dance. She then slowly established herself as a dance artist, always performing on her own but creating works in collaboration with visual artists, photographers and choreographers. She then developed skills as a photographer and installation artist.

 

Most of her performance works were made between 1982 and 2000 and the shows toured widely in the UK and Switzerland. Her main themes were women’s issues and feminist aesthetics, particularly the way the body is defined and perceived in western culture. Her signature style combined dance, projected slides and installations, creating highly visual and emotional works.

 

On this page are featured works from the middle years (1987 - 1994). To view her other performances, go to this page.

 

Introduction Video

filmed at Colchester Arts Centre (UK)

before a performance of The Rebelonging (1992)

 

 

Reviews

 

Below is a review of GOLD, performance, written by Carole Woddis, theatre critic, published in 1988 in City Limits:

 

"Looking like some illuminated totem goddess of consumerism (costume made from brand-name plastic bags, Selfridges, Harrods, Tesco et al. with a plumed head-dress of fivers), Françoise Sergy’s ‘Gold’ is a 45 minutes sound and visual assault upon 20th century’s obsession with consuming by a dance performer who, ultimately, seems to have stepped straight from the 60s. And none the worse for that.

 

There is a spirited and appealing innocence about Sergy’s ‘Gold’ for all its performance art trappings which include physical confrontations with the obligatory projected slides, a touch of audience participation, and emblematically amidst Rimsky-Korsakov and Sweet Honey in the Rock, Nina Simone’s lush rendering of ‘I Got Life’ from Hair. Ms Sergy has a bold sense of her own vision which she uses with wit and ingenuity (she puts fairy lights in places you’d never believe), and is also greatly helped by the stylish and striking projections of phototherapist Rosy Martin (bridal suites inc) and documentary photographer Honey Salvadori.

 

Even if there is a touch of the demented rabbits about this show, catch ‘Gold’ before the apocalyptic fires of Ms Sergy’s vision get you."

 

Also, a full length review of CRUMBLED, performance, was published in The Guardian in 1994, written by Sophie Constanti, dance critic: Dancing Across the frontiers (view as a pdf)

 

 

 

 

 

Performance Works (late 1980s)

 

 

Barefoot Pace-Maker

(video not available)

a dance performance by Françoise Sergy (1987)

a collaboration with photography artist Rosy Martin

commissioned by Chisenhale Dance Space and Camerawork, London (UK)

funded by Greater London Arts, Lambeth Arts Council, 1987 DEC Dance Awards

UK tour: 19 venues

 

A quote from the original programme:

 

"This is barefoot medicine. A woman grabs the stethoscope and sets the pace. From a child’s view on smoking to how we treat our doctors, it’s all here, pulsing, magnified, the burning question on the life line: our health, is it given, is it made, and do we really care?

 

Barefoot Pace-Maker is an experiment between dancer Françoise Sergy and photographer Rosy Martin. Using a technique called Phototherapy developed by Rosy Martin and Jo Spence, we invent situations, sometimes triggered from the past, sometimes not, and play all the characters: doctor, patient, healer, smoker, addictions, pills, pains, fear, touching the child in us, our own vulnerability."

 

This performance work was never filmed. However, a selection of the Phototherapy images which were part of the installation can be seen below.

 

• 
  orgy
  
• 
  orgy
  
• 
  orgy
  
• 
  smoking
  
• 
  smoking
• 
  smoking
  
• 
  patient
  
• 
  doctor
  
• 
  patient
  
• 
  healing
  
• 
  healing
• 
  healing
  

Gold

 

a dance and installation performance by Françoise Sergy (1988)

a collaboration with photographers Rosy Martin and Honey Salvadori

video by David Finch (1989)

funded by Greater London Arts and Yorkshire Arts

UK tour: 15 venues

 

A quote from the original programme:

 

"GOLD is about wealth and the ecstasy of wanting. Our love affair with consumerism. Projected slides and giant costumes transform the performer’s dance into a deliberate confrontation. She is the symbol of money, perilously parading the altar of her own consuming passion. A succession of icons appear: a television, a department store, a Christmas tree, a wedding dress, a fruit machine, complete with multi-coloured lights and chocolate money. Someone uses cake decorations as make-up and there as four brides on offer, all guaranteed to find a niche in your purse and satisfy your dreams of happiness.

 

When everything has been taken away, our needs still remain. There is no way of measuring satisfaction. She will discover her needs. She will cherish them, nurture them. She will become the consumer of her own destiny."

 

A selection of the images which were part of the installation can be seen below.

 

• 
  bride
  
• 
  smile
  
• 
  icon
  
• 
  icon
  
• 
  icon
• 
  icon
  

 

Around Woman

(video not available)

a dance performance and installation by Françoise Sergy (1989)

a commission by Yorkshire Arts

a residency at Norton College, Sheffield (UK)

funded by Greater London Arts

UK tour: 27 venues

 

A quote from the original programme:

 

"Around Woman is a visual feast in honour of the common body, a dance daring to feel, touch, accept and cherish our own physical self. Abstract colour slides are projected onto large silk panels and directly onto the performer whose costumes include a dress made out of shimmering glass. The photographs zoom in to reveal the beauty of the most despised, tabooed parts of our body: hair, fat, muscles. A woman’s body whose issue has never been more political is celebrated amidst wonderful images and flying energy."

 

The video recording of this work is of poor quality, so not featured here. However, a selection of the images which were part of the installation can be seen below.

 

• 
  self-portrait
  
• 
  self-portrait
  
• 
  self-portrait
  
• 
  self-portrait
  
• 
  self-portrait
• 
  self-portrait
  

The Battle of the Sizes

(video not available)

a dance performance and installation by Françoise Sergy (1990)

(Around Woman part 2)

UK tour: 12 venues

 

A quote from the original programme:

 

"A woman comes face to face with the monster inside her own body. Dying to be thin. Starving, bingeing. Our bodies are wrong, our bodies are all we have. Kill the hated flesh, dissolve it, chop it up, dispose of it. Thinness is perfection.

 

Underneath we’re all hairy.

 

The Battle of the Sizes is part 2 of Around Woman, both pieces performed together. Dance, slides, shadows, costumes, mirrors with feelings of their own and a herd of fat balloons, all take over the stage. Through their poignant tales of whispered agony and rage, she shrugs off years of deception and self-doubt and presents her own, totally unacceptable image: big, bold, scary, funny, full and shining."

 

The video recording of this work is of poor quality, so not featured here. However, a selection of the images which were part of the installation can be seen below.

 

• 
  stocking
  
• 
  pins
  
• 
  mirror
  
• 
  mirror
  
• 
  mirror
• 
  mirror
  

 

 

 

 

Performance Works (early 1990s)

 

 

The Rebelonging

(video not available)

a dance performance and installation by Françoise Sergy (1991)

funded by Greater London Arts and Acton Community Arts Workshop

tour to UK and Switzerland: 12 venues

 

A quote from the original programme:

 

"No way home. On her own. Was it by choice or was she pushed? This is the story of a woman’s life uprooted, a woman alone, alien, carrying her past on her back, an everyday rebel longing and dreaming of a future where she could belong.

 

Françoise writes: "My father died in May 1991, while I was working on this piece. Later that summer I returned to Switzerland and revisited the home of my early childhood, where he had lived for the past forty years. The old sawmill, his business and passion, stood, completely empty in the dusty sunlight. My father had always wanted a son, because he thought a son would carry on the family business. I took images of the sawmill, to give them a new home, with me forever."

 

Rootlessness has many shapes: political, economical, emotional... one can experience being held in or out, and one can experience being held both in and out at the same time.”

 

The video recording of this work is of poor quality, so not featured here. However, a selection of the images which were part of the installation can be seen below.

 

• 
  sawmill
  
• 
  sawmill
  
• 
  mud
  
• 
  mud
  
• 
  on her own
• 
  no home
  
• 
  femaleness
  
• 
  woman's place
  
• 
  woman's place
  

 

R-Age

(video not available)

a dance performance and installation by Françoise Sergy (1992)

Tour to UK, Switzerland and Mexico: 10 venues

 

A quote from the original programme:

 

"For the first time, in a series of bold visual images, Françoise Sergy experiments with the use of the male body as a symbol of our own physical vulnerability.

 

As. Soone. As. Wee. To. Bee. Begynne:

We. Did. Beginne. To. Bee. Undone.

(17th century engraving)

 

R-Age is about ageing. Because we can - we must - trust that our bodies are all we have. But can we really face the fear?"

 

The video recording of this work is of poor quality, so not featured here. However, a selection of the images which were part of the installation can be seen below.

 

• 
  egg yolks
  
• 
  mould
  
• 
  octopus
  
• 
  eye
  
• 
  male body
• 
  male body
  

 

Crumbled

(video not available)

a dance performance and installation by Françoise Sergy (1994)

UK tour: 9 venues

 

A quote from the original programme:

 

"This woman is not afraid of being alone.

 

Or is she? Her new work, Crumbled, is about a home, lost in the past, found in the present, weighed down by memories. It is about the security of the material world, solid, real, like a brick or the blow of a hammer - but what is going on inside? Carefully edging between the comfort of the familiar and the terror of losing everything, a story unfolds of someone, somewhere, opening a door..."

 

The video recording of this work is of poor quality, so not featured here. However, a selection of the images which were part of the installation can be seen below.

 

• 
  clock
  
• 
  child
  
• 
  sofa
  
• 
  tea pot
  
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  telephone
• 
  kettle