CAMILLE

“Is this her? Yes. She looks very young. How old is she? And she is already modelling for him, isn’t she? You don’t know that? Rodin asked her to pose for him. This is so obscene, that Kiss! They are the talk of all Paris! She’s got no shame!” – “But I am a sculptor!”

Enter the studio of the French female sculptor Camille Claudel. In the shadow of her teacher, art partner and lover August Rodin she hardly had the chance to develop her great talent. Hurt by the unrequited relationship, rejected by society and her own family, and physically exhausted, she locked herself off from the surrounding world in her studio. She destroyed most of her works. She spent thirteen years in a lunatic asylum. It was only at the end of the 20th century that public interest in her arose, and soon she became a legend.

This original performance by Veronika Riedlbauchova and Lucia Skandikova playfully and with exaggeration explores the tragic life of the artist Camille Claudel. They unfold the fragments of her story, dreams and desires, her passion for the sculptor and sculptures. The authors explore the boundaries between reality and insanity through visual and physical metaphors.

The authors met each other for the first time in Barcelona during their studies at the Institut del Theatre. Veronika Riedlbauchova, a graduate of Direction–Dramaturgy at the KALD DAMU, studied motion theatre in Barcelona. Lucia Skandikova is a graduate of the Stage Design Department at DAMU.

“For me personally, the most important moment is that of her inner loneliness, and also the loneliness into which she locks herself off from society,” says Lucia, “in other words the moment when all of her ideas unravel in this closed space, in fact the whole of Paris exists in herself. When man is alone with himself, the ideas work in a different dimension, and reality becomes distorted.” Veronika adds, “What attracts me in this performance is the inspiration with creative art which, for a motion project, is a challenge; in each image or sculpture, motion is somehow incorporated, although halted, but it is still there. And it’s an adventure to go and look for it and bring it to life.”