This choreographic piece for 3 dancers is set in a psychedelic imaginary world. It seeks precarity and incoherence, ambiguous situations, and trouble. It’s inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas. A feminist epistolary novel written in 1938, attempting to answer the question “how to avoid war?”, based on the assumption that it is a patriarchal issue.

NOTE OF INTENT

“From Virginia Woolf’s act of writing, I retain her refusal to remain a passive and burdened spectator of a history presented as inevitable, as well as her sense of humour and her irrepressible need to seek, within her own language—literature—the expression of a profound pacifist commitment.

At a time when Europe is once again embarking on an arms race, when the rhetoric of war is increasingly permeating political and media discourse, and when military, imperialist and colonial projects continue to rage across the world, we have chosen to engage with Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas (1938) in order to seek, through our own language—dance—a way of casting a satirical gaze on the patriarchal structures of power described by the author.

Same Old Songs takes the form of a choreographic hallucination that resists every attempt at disciplining or bringing bodies into line, while mischievously striving to ward off feelings of despair and powerlessness in the face of authoritarianism.”

— Maud Blandel

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Biography

Initially trained as a dancer-performer in Toulouse, Maud Blandel (FR/CH) is a choreographer based in Lausanne. She furthered her studies with a Master’s degree in Stage Direction at La Manufacture (Lausanne) and completed the Work.Master programme in Performance at HEAD Geneva. In 2015, she founded the association I L K A and began developing her own artistic practice.

Her approach to dramaturgy, her interest in transformation, and her keen sense of musicality have led her to create singular choreographic works of remarkable compositional strength. Her creations include TOUCH DOWN (2015), Lignes de conduite (2018), Diverti Menti (2020), Double Septet (2021), and L’œil nu (2023). In her recent works, Maud has focused on exploring physicalities and states of presence that emerge from a constant negotiation between principles dictated by and for the collective and individual expressivity. Having recently been involved in the sound creation of L’œil nu, she now grants sound and music a decisive role as genuine dramaturgical tools within her artistic practice.

Alongside her own work, Maud has collaborated with artists including Cindy Van Acker, Heiner Goebbels, and Romeo Castellucci. She is currently active in supporting emerging stage authors and makers. Deeply interested in arts pedagogy, she is regularly invited to give lectures and share her practices and working methods at institutions such as the CNDC Angers (BA Dance), La Manufacture (MA Theatre), EPFL (“Art and Fundamentals” programme for first-year architecture students), HEAD Genève (BA Art/Action), and the École des Beaux-Arts d’Annecy.

In February 2025, in collaboration with guitarist Flavio Virzì, she created a radio piece with members of ASLAA (Association Sports et Loisirs pour Aveugles et Amblyopes) as part of the European project Radio That Matters. In April 2025, she also created La Rumeur, a group work for the twenty students of the CNDC Angers.

Maud Blandel has been an artist in residence at Arsenic since 2018. She is an associated artist at the CNDC Angers as well as at Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy. From 2016 to 2025, she was associated with Parallèle, and she is currently a companion artist of the Pavillon ADC.