October 17-18, 2015 (the performances have occurred but Lise Haller Baggesen's installation remains on view until July 2016

Theatre de la Ville
Paris, France

Pleasure Zone takes you on a journey – through Michal Samama’s and Keijaun Thomas’s body-based performances – to spaces rarely seen in the Theatre de la Ville. Michal Samama, whose performances investigate quotidian movement over time, will lead audiences up to Sarah Bernhardt’s loge to experience Samama’s visceral relationship to the late actress’s original bathtub within the loge. Keijaun Thomas, whose performances question normative movement and behavior, will lead audiences up to artist Lise Haller Baggesen’s glam installation within a former 1970s bar, which celebrates disco as a radical inquiry into the politics of pleasure, ecstasy, and desire. 

Pleasure Zone is divided into two performances. Half of the audience follows one performer, the other half follows the other performer. The audience returns to the original starting point to follow the other performer. 

To honor the upcoming COP21 Paris climate talks at the United Nations, we are serving water with organic herbs - melisse and mint - from Marjetica Potrc's garden La Semeuse at Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers.

Works in show:

Lise Haller Baggesen
Sound of Silver, Talk to Me, 2015
Mixed media installation within Theatre de la Ville bar (turned disco room)
This work references the 1970s disco era as a form of social protest against normalcy and the corresponding politics of pleasure.  The paintings, disco balls, flashing lights, and music mix the private and public world of living within a creative zone of pleasure.

Foreign Object – Curtains, 2015
Performance by Michel Samama
Costume by Elnaz Javanidizaji
Navigating the body between the theater space and the backstage, between life on stage and life behind the curtains, Michal Samama leads the audience from the theater lobby into Sarah Bernhardt's bathtub.

Part I: Selective Seeing: Corners You, 2015
Performance by Keijaun Thomas
Performing with gold fabric, a whistle, plastic cups and bags, and hair glue, Thomas guides audiences through the pleasure, desire, and jouissance of libidinal discourse and movement on the way to Lise Haller Baggesen’s disco room.