Heather Newhouse alternating with Adèle Huber, soprano
Franck-Emmanuel Comte, musical direction, conception and harpsichord

Instrumentalists : Reynier Guerrero (violin), Florian Verhaegen (violin), Nicolas Janot (double bass), Aude Walker-Viry (cello), Nicolas Muzy (theorbo & guitar), David Bruley (percussion)

Dancers : Aurélien Vaudey, Mathilde Devoghel, Joël Luzolo, Chika Nakayama, Titouan Wiener

Choreography : Mourad Merzouki assisted by Marjorie Hannoteaux

Lighting design : Esteban Loirat

Costume design : Odrée Chaminade

I am madness
The one who alone inspires
Pleasure, sweetness
And joy in the world
– Henry Le Bailly (1643)

With these few verses set to music by Henry Le Bailly, our programme begins. The figure of Madness, embodied by soprano Heather Newhouse, appears in a singular light, far removed from the usual baroque visions marked by excess or hysteria. Here, madness becomes luminous and fertile — a source of momentum and inspiration.

It is this deliberately counterintuitive approach that we explore throughout this choreographed concert. Structured as a theme and variations, the programme traverses the many faces of madness in constant motion: eccentric, irreverent, visionary, joyful, or painful. It unfolds in turn through the unflinching and lucid narrative of the Virgin Mary in Tarquinio Merula, in the lament of the lover in Barbara Strozzi, and through the moving message of Queen Isabella, delivering her testament from beyond the grave.

Musically, the ground basses — true rhythmic engines of this repertoire — run throughout the programme. They support the emergence of a second underlying theme: metamorphosis. Never fixed and always evolving, our interpretative approach is nourished by the interaction between musicians, singers, and dancers, as well as by the broad possibilities of improvisation and ornamentation inherent in this repertoire, at the crossroads of learned and popular traditions, written and oral transmission.

Both the framework for variation and the carriers of madness’s many faces, ostinato patterns also form an essential link with the choreographic writing of Mourad Merzouki. For this fourth production created together, these motifs — emblematic of 17th-century Italian and Spanish music — become a privileged source of inspiration, allowing contemporary and hip-hop dance to take full root in the musical universe of the Concert de l’Hostel Dieu, the result of a dialogue between historically informed performance and a resolutely contemporary aesthetic.
lien essentiel avec l’écriture chorégraphique de Mourad Merzouki. Pour ce quatrième spectacle créé ensemble, ces motifs — emblématiques des musiques italiennes et espagnoles du XVIIe siècle — deviennent un terrain d’inspiration privilégié, permettant à une danse contemporaine et hip-hop de s’inscrire pleinement dans l’univers musical du Concert de l’Hostel Dieu, fruit d’un dialogue entre interprétation historiquement informée et esthétique résolument actuelle.

- Franck-Emmanuel Comte

Locura continues in the wake of Folia, an emblematic piece that made a lasting impression through its bold union of contemporary hip-hop dance and baroque music. This first encounter in 2018, praised for its energy, inventiveness, and public success, revealed the power of dialogue between our two artistic worlds. With Locura, we wished to extend, highlight, and deepen this unique bond woven between music and dance. This new creation explores even further the permeability of artistic boundaries, affirming our desire to create dialogue between aesthetics, to cross languages, and to open a space where bodies and sounds respond to each other in a shared breath. Locura explores human madness not as deviation, but as a force of transgression and openness. This form of madness — the one that drives people to cross boundaries, whether geographical, cultural, aesthetic, or inner — becomes the motor of a movement toward universality. In Locura, madness is a vital impulse, a breath that dissolves limits in order to reveal what connects us. We chose for music and dance not merely to coexist, but to merge, intertwine, and transform one another. Musicians become bodies. Dancers become breath. Gestures respond to notes, rhythms pass through bodies, voices extend movement. This fusion erases the boundaries between disciplines, aesthetics, and roles. It creates a space where everyone — performer or spectator — can experience the power of a shared language: immediate and deeply human. By celebrating creative madness, Locura invites each person to transcend their own boundaries, to welcome the other, and to recognize in them a fragment of oneself. The performance thus becomes a contemporary ritual — a moment in which we remember that humanity, despite its fractures, always tends toward unity.

- Mourad Merzouki