gimme a break !!!
that’s twisted
baptiste cazaux
gimme a break!!!
17 March at 8.30 pm
That’s twisted
19 March at 8.30 pm
An evening featuring the performance *Freestyle is a heart to beat*
Free places available for members of our partner, Different Class
More information
GIMME A BREAK !!! is a quest for catharsis. Drawing on the vocabulary of rave music, meditation and headbanging, Baptiste Cazaux continues his exploration of letting go, which he sees as a survival strategy in the face of capitalism. In a duet with loudspeakers, the choreographer creates a disrupted space-time, full of complexities and contradictions, in which he sets out in pursuit of a necessary and assertive life force.
By manipulating the act of listening as a plastic, moving material, creating a field of transformation that makes temporalities, affects and intensities waver, That’s twisted blurs the notions of time and perception. Driven by his nostalgia for the pop anthems of the 2010s – tinged with nihilism and a joyful fatalism in the face of anxiety about an uncertain future – the piece is rooted in a contemporary melancholy that Baptiste Cazaux seeks to transcend.
Through a collage of dances and sounds from different eras, he composes a hybrid space where movements, music and noises are distorted and layered before colliding, like a DJ scratching in the middle of a track. In this psychedelic and sensual drifting, memory and confusion merge to reveal a murky landscape, made up of echoes, fragments and shifting presences.
Concept, choreography and performance: Baptiste Cazaux
Music: Nelly Hello
Assistant and external consultant: Lisa Laure
Sound: Gaspard Perdrisat
Lighting: Justine Bouillet
Dramaturgy: Johanna Hilari
Administration/Production/Distribution in Switzerland: Yamina Pilli – Ohlala production
International distribution: Quentin Legrand (Rue Branly)
Production: HONEYHONEYDANCEDANCE
Co-production: La Bâtie – Festival de Genève (Switzerland),
L’Abri (Geneva, Switzerland), Théâtre Sévelin 36 (Lausanne, Switzerland),
KLAP Maison pour la danse (Marseille, France)
Support: CND – Centre national de la danse (Lyon, France)
Residency and support as part of the Danse & Dramaturgie programme (Sudpol Luzern, Switzerland / ROXY Birsfelden, Switzerland), Réseau Grand Luxe (2021–2022), Swiss Authors’ Society (SSA), Pro Helvetia (Zurich, Switzerland), Ernst Gohner Stiftung (Zurich, Switzerland)
Concept, choreography and performance: Baptiste Cazaux
Music: Nelly Hello
Artistic advisor: Samir Kennedy
Sound: Gaspard Perdrisat
Lighting: Justine Bouillet
Dramaturgy: Johanna Hilari
Music consultant: Sandar Tun Tun
Costumes: Josiane Martinho
Administration/Production/Distribution in Switzerland:
Yamina Pilli – oh la la performing arts production
International distribution: Quentin Legrand (Rue Branly)
Production: HONEYHONEYDANCEDANCE
Co-production: Pavillon ADC (Geneva, Switzerland)
(AC) COMPAGNONS programme supported by the Leenaards Foundation
– Lausanne, Switzerland), Kaserne Basel (Basel, Switzerland)
Residencies: Pavillon ADC (Geneva, Switzerland), Kaserne Basel
(Basel, Switzerland), IRA Festival (Switzerland), L’Abri (Geneva, Switzerland)
Support: RESO’s 2025 Co-production Platform –
Tanznetzwerk Schweiz – Reseau Danse Suisse
‘Originally from a small village in south-west France, I now live and work in Geneva. I arrived there in 2015 to join a contemporary dance training programme, which I completed two years later.
In 2018 I created my first show, EXERCICE DE STYLES #2, followed by perfect pitch in 2021. These first two pieces allowed me to lay the foundations of my practice: a live style, improvised and musical, seeking to inhabit the vulnerability offered by uncertainty.
In 2023 I created GIMME A BREAK !!! after a bout of depression brought on by the various lockdowns. I wanted to create a space of viscerality and sensoriness, to activate altered states of consciousness through a headbanging practice inspired by rave culture and jungle music.
I recently created That’s twisted, a nostalgic performance-trip inspired by my nostalgia for the nihilistic pop anthems of the late 2000s.’
Baptiste Cazaux