Monologues is presented through a series of performances spread out through time and space. Each of them takes its shape in distinct venues and time. This trimester, Monologues #1, #3 and #4 will be presented at Arsenic.

Backwards to the concept of monologue, usually evoking a solo and egocentrical discourse, the choreographer Nicole Seiler explores here the monologue as a collective shape. The monologues are in dialogue, listening and answering, all the way to creating a polyphony of self-poetry.

What does it mean to have a voice? What does a voice say when its wordless? What does a body say when its voiceless?

The Monologues offers a space to nourish and cherish multi-faceted and moving identities. They reveal both idiosyncrasies and transversalities, through the ways in which each performer expresses themselves and begins to exist here and now. Hoping along the way to be heard and seen.

Gabriel Obergfell

Born in 1993 with a Swiss nationality, Gabriel graduated with a bachelor’s in physical Theater from the Accademia Teatro Dimitri in Verscio, Switzerland. He went on the study at the Manufacture in Lausanne graduating in June 2020 with a with a bachelor in Contemporary Dance. For him, his studies were mainly shaped by the classes given by Simon Berz, Monathan Burrows, Sharon Eyal, Dominique Falquet, Thomas Hauert, Martin Kilvady, Mark Lorimer, Thomas Mettler, Nicole Seiler et David Zambrano. He dances and performs in the pieces of Masha Dimitri, Lilo Bauer, François Gremaud, Thomas Mettler, Nicole Seiler, Tara Lorenzen, Alix Eynaudi, Olivia Ronzani, Franca Burandt, Simon Berz, Caspar Guyer. He has also created two pieces: Der Krieg singt nicht in 2016 and écoute voir in 2017.

Nicole Seiler created her company in 2002 and has since made over 30 projects. She is now a key figure of the Swiss contemporary dance scene.

Her work creates innovative and singular projects with a great variety of format: on-stage choreographies, videos, movies, performances, and choreographic installation, often in situ, keeping the audience active. During the last few years, her research on image and sound focused mainly on the depiction of movement, the exploration of a dance language in relation to its physical counterpart, and the memory of movement from a historical or personal point of view.
It brought her to develop an interest to voice work, through the use of the body as an instrument.
Nicole Seiler has won several awards, among which the Swiss Arts Award in 2021.