Black humour

La Ribot and Mathilde Monnier form a duo. Or, when burlesque takes revenge on art 

They laugh and cry together like two teenage best friends, two sisters, two black swans in a pas de deux. Nobody believed the project could work.

La Ribot and Mathilde Monnier? Aren’t those two very different artistic worlds? Mathilde with her rotating groups, the embodiment of progress in movement, and who has recently been researching harmony (see ballet-tanz 6/07), and at the other extreme the Swiss-Spanish artist with her solitary performances, “distinguidas” through and through? On a superficial level, this seems to be the case. But what’s wrong with that? Someone who can create something with a writer or a pop singer, like Monnier can, can do the same with an artist. Someone who can pull off a piece with fifty amateurs producing roars of laughter from beginning to end (“40 espontáneos,” 2004) like La Ribot, should be able to establish a dialogue with an experienced choreographer. 

Indeed their interests lie in comparable areas. La Ribot has symbolic concepts condensed into poses; Monnier has deconstruction and exploration of peripheries. “It’s true that we are very different,” says La ...