The title of the piece plays with the word «unnerving» and the construction «un-nevering». The work begins with an absence, more precisely by manifesting an absence when choreographer and creator Thea Patterson shares with the audience that the starting point of what we are about to witness is the death of her partner and the search for an answer: How do we continue collaborating with someone who is no longer here? However, as a spectator, what I observed in the performance was a process of mourning. The collaboration emerges from mourning with all its pain, weight, anguish, and bewilderment, and becomes an homage that ends in a conviviality with the audience, like a return to life after the pain of loss.

This is an episodic piece where each fragment has an internal logic, its own climax and conclusion. Three performers, three women, alternate actions. At first, one of them moves across a loose parquet floor that falls apart, she loses the floor as she moves while the other two try to build one for her with wooden slats. At another moment, Rachel Harris and Elinor Fueter engage in a kind of battle, not with each other, with a rope, until they are exhausted. Thea Patterson doesn’t participate in the battle; she watches from a distance, a spectator of her own grief, yet unable to participate.

This is my seventh show at the FTA and I realize I hadn’t seen only women on stage; this is the work with the greatest feminine energy I’ve ever seen here. I felt it in my body when the three women embraced and held each other, revealing a genuine connection between them. That moment took me by surprise, as if I were catching my breath.

The finale is achieved with the support, companionship and complicity of some people who went on stage to build structures with the wooden slats and invite others to participate; the invitation is friendly and not imposing. Soon, people are sitting on the floor arranging wood all over the stage, seem it could last for hours, but at certain moment Thea Patterson stands up and applause breaks out.

UN SPECTACLE DE / PRODUCED BY THEA PATTERSON CONCEPTION ET CHORÉGRAPHIE / CONCEIVED AND CHOREOGRAPHED BY THEA PATTERSON EN COLLABORATION AVEC / IN COLLABORATION WITH RACHEL HARRIS + ELINOR FUETER INTERPRÉTATION / PERFORMED BY THEA PATTERSON + RACHEL HARRIS + ELINOR FUETER DRAMATURGIE / DRAMATURGY LOIS BROWN + PETER TROSZTMER SON / SOUND DESIGN DAVID DUBLINE LUMIÈRES / LIGHTING DESIGN PAUL CHAMBERS VIDÉO JEREMY GORDANEER PRODUCTION DÉLÉGUÉE / EXECUTIVE PRODUCER PARBLEUX PHOTO KINGA MICHALSKA SUR LA PHOTO / FEATURING THEA PATTERSON COPRODUCTION FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES PRÉSENTATION EN COLLABORATION AVEC / PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH ESPACE LIBRE