A Melange Performance in 3 Parts
to see, hear, smell, wonder and taste!
Written, told, sung, filmed, painted & cooked by Nicole Peyrafitte

Watching this poet-vocalist-all-around-artist performing the American premiere of ''Bi-Continental Chowder'' at Firlefanz Gallery in Albany earlier this year, one audience member was moved to describe the performance as follows: ''A French woman with stylist-spiky red hair balanced a brass chime bowl on her head, and while singing a 5,000-year-old Sumerian poem, walked the length of the gallery and back tapping the bowl with a seashell and a wooden stick. When she returned to the stage, she kept singing, removed the bowl, then stood on her head and while performing various acrobatic leg movements, continued singing the poem until the end. At the same time a large pot of chowder was cooking.''
Now that's performance art! The Albany Times-Union

PART 1: Right in front of you I will cook The Bi-Continental Chowder and while doing so I will tell you the enchanting story of the -unusual- ingredients. (20 mns)

PART 2: While the The Bi-Continental Chowder simmers gently on the side of the stage, we will embark for a non-linear voyage -though on a line-- of original songs, videos, poems and musics. (45/50mns).

PART 3: By now the mouth-watering smell of The Bi-Continental Chowder has taken over the room. It is time to share it with the audience and exchange friendship, ideas, recipe..

This performance in 3 parts brings together the findings gathered on my line. A virtual line between Luchon, my hometown in the French-Occitan Pyrenees and Albany NY USA where I live. Both places lay on the same latitude! This line exists with or without me but through me! Immanent evidence; a mantra emerges:
Las causas cagen on jasen Things fall where they lie Les choses tombent où elles reposent.

The recipe, the videos, the paintings, the texts, the music, the movements are the interpretations of heuristic (from the Greek "heurisko" which means : I find. Or a particular technique of directing your attention toward discovery) research on both continents.

Being the Romanesque bas-relief of La Hemna de Oô (The Women of Oô) , la Pèira Hitta (the raised stone of the Pierrefitte's pass), Inanna the Sumerian goddess, le Brooklyn bridge or Mahicanituck (Amerindian name of the Hudson river) they all are attempts to explore deeper strata of the memory where exact chronology is not an issue. It is about unveiling a ritual already present in the collective unconscious.

bon appetit!

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