Performances
Discover the various performances of Les Itinérantes.
THE GARDENS OF LIGHT
SACRED PROGRAM
This program guides you through sacred songs and texts from different cultures and eras, to encounter that space where the divine becomes a personal experience and journey. Where traditions intertwine in a captivating continuity, leading you to discover the Sacred within yourself.
In the Gardens of Light, a Gregorian chant can stand alongside a Hindu mantra, a “kvæði” from the Old Norse Edda, an excerpt from the Tao Te King, or even a Sufi poem.
Program: sacred songs from various traditions, origins, and eras
Venues and acoustics: Indoors and unamplified, only heritage sites with spacious acoustics, preference for flexible spaces
Performers: Manon COUSIN, Pauline LANGLOIS DE SWARTE, Elodie PONT (3 singers), option available with a percussionist
HYSTERÆ
FEMININE FIGURES – STAGED PERFORMANCE
Mothers, queens, widows, witches, workers, wives, fairies, and sorceresses… Powerful, defenseless, adored or feared, made invisible or idealized, fantasized about and demonized, vengeful and merciful, victims, idols. The representations of the feminine across the world and throughout history are numerous and fascinating in their paradoxes. Whether they take the form of enchanting creatures with infinite powers, malevolent goddesses or saints, or whether they unfold in the multiple roles that human society assigns, these archetypal figures always tell a complex, contradictory, and infinitely rich story.
Carried by melodies from around the world with surprising narratives, original compositions, and little-known works by women composers or authors, HYSTERÆ is a journey, a celebration, a song of love and liberation. It is about embracing totality, accepting ambivalence, letting our contradictions dance, and embodying all the women we carry within us.
Program: portraits of women through traditional songs, French songs, medieval chants, compositions…
Venues and acoustics: Indoors and theater or performance hall for the staged version.
Performers: Manon COUSIN, Pauline LANGLOIS DE SWARTE, Elodie PONT (3 singers).
The staged version is performed with their sound and lighting engineers (2 technicians)
ORIGINS
ORIGINS OF MUSIC – 4 ELEMENTS
“We trace back to the origins of humanity, becoming one with its first instrument: the voice.”
Hebdo LA VIE
Music accompanies humanity. Since prehistory, humans have created music and sung. And like all artists, composers throughout time have been inspired by what they heard or experienced to create and share. This program, journeying through the 4 elements, tells what drove humans to sing: the need to connect with something else, to accompany a ritual, a task, to dance, to gain strength, to pray, to honor, to transmit, or to tell a story…
Program: traditional world songs, compositions, medieval music…
Venues and acoustics: Indoors, amplified if the percussionist is present, compatible with performance halls
Performers: Manon COUSIN, Pauline LANGLOIS DE SWARTE, Elodie PONT (3 singers), & Thierry GOMAR (percussionist).
TERRA MATER
PROGRAM ON THE SACRED FEMININE
High light, bearer of hope, universal mother, light of humanity, queen of the heavens… Throughout time, the feminine (particularly through the figure of Mary) has been associated in the sacred with Light and Nature. Through original compositions and arrangements of traditional songs, Les Itinérantes sing of the Mother, in over 10 different languages, spanning eras and styles.
Mary is here the Earth, the Goddess, Gaia… many names but the same Woman, all women.
Program: chants to the Virgin, Christian, Orthodox, Sufi chants…
Venues and acoustics: Indoors and unamplified, only heritage sites with spacious acoustics
Performers: Manon COUSIN, Pauline LANGLOIS DE SWARTE, Elodie PONT (3 singers). This program also exists in a version with the singers from the IRVEM master class.
MUNDUS IMAGINALIS
FANTASTIC MEDIEVAL PROGRAM
“Three sorceresses as if escaped from a not-so-distant Brocéliande…”
(Natalie Dessay & Laurent Naouri, opera singers)
Would you like to hear a beautiful tale of love and death?
Lend an ear and close your eyes if you wish. Voices will guide you through myths and legends, to distant lands. Lands where men fight dragons, fall in love with fairies, where forests are populated by mysterious creatures, where love potions unite hearts, and where magic can still seal destinies.
Gregorian chant, traditional songs, original compositions and arrangements, in sometimes lost or invented languages, Les Itinérantes embark you on a journey into the fantastic medieval imagination, for a mystical stroll out of our time.
Program: re-arranged medieval chants, traditional world songs, compositions
Venues and acoustics: Indoors and unamplified (possibility of amplification), preferably in heritage sites with spacious acoustics
Performers: Manon COUSIN, Pauline LANGLOIS DE SWARTE, Elodie PONT (3 singers).
FROM ONE LAND TO ANOTHER
FOLKLORE – NATURE – JOURNEY BETWEEN WORLDS
“The realm of faerie is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and innumerable stars; beauty that is an enchantment and an omnipresent peril; joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.”
J.R.R Tolkien
Between traditional songs and original compositions, on the border of dream and reality, Les Itinérantes invite you to a timeless moment at the crossroads of worlds. Let yourself be guided by birds, dragonflies, or mischievous spirits on a journey across the 5 continents and even beyond, discovering the folklore of various traditions.
Program: folk and traditional songs from the 5 continents, nature/animals theme
Venues and acoustics: Indoors and unamplified (amplification possible)
Performers: Manon COUSIN, Pauline LANGLOIS DE SWARTE, Elodie PONT (3 singers).
WINTER JOURNEYS
WINTER PROGRAM
“A mysterious and magnificent journey into the heart of winter, made of transcriptions and arrangements of traditional or classical tunes. Each melody sung is a delight of purity and precision.”
FRANCE MUSIQUE.
Sankta Lucia in Sweden, the winter solstice in the Baltic countries, Christmas festivities… December celebrations have united and gathered people for thousands of years. When the surrounding darkness meets the joy of reuniting, laughing… singing to ward off the cold. You will be invited to have tea with the Sugar Plum Fairy, drawn into a mystical epic under the ice… You will meet the Spirits of Christmas and be invited to ride on the sleigh of the illustrious Old Man Winter. Not to mention the dance of a pretty Brazilian butterfly, fluttering from flower to flower, telling us about the warmth of its summer Christmas…
Program: Christmas carols, winter solstice songs, compositions…
Venues and acoustics: Indoors and unamplified
Performers: Manon COUSIN, Pauline LANGLOIS DE SWARTE, Elodie PONT (3 singers), & Thierry GOMAR (percussionist). Possible without the percussionist.
THE HOUR OF DREAMS
NIGHT – DREAMS – MAGIC
Les Itinérantes invite you to a journey into the realm of dreams, where the boundaries between dream and reality dissipate and the invisible is revealed. An ode to the night and its mysteries, an invitation to embrace the darkness to escape, to love, to dream, to surrender to memories or contemplation, and sometimes to attend a masked ball under the moon, or even to encounter mischievous ghosts or mysterious queens.
Program: world music, French song, compositions or arrangements on the theme of night, dreams, magic…
Venues and acoustics: Indoors, amplified or not
Performers: Manon COUSIN, Pauline LANGLOIS DE SWARTE, Elodie PONT (3 singers)
LES ITINÉRANTES HAVE THE WIND IN POP
COLLABORATION WITH A GUITARIST/LUTHIST
Merrily blending styles and languages, the 3 singers of the a cappella trio “Les Itinérantes” and baroque guitarist and lutenist Charles-Edouard Fantin, invite you on a musical journey around the world while following the sun’s course: a gentle embarkation in the land of the rising sun. Then heading to old Europe, with a few surprise stops, sun at its zenith in Andalusia and its captivating rhythms!
A little further North: in France, where everything ends in songs…
In England? The Beatles, of course!
And come witness the sunset on the beaches of Brazil to the rhythm of bossa nova, sipping a refreshing caipirinha…
Program: traditional world songs, French song, variety
Venues and acoustics: Indoors, preferably amplified, compatible with performance halls
Performers: Manon COUSIN, Pauline LANGLOIS DE SWARTE, Elodie PONT (3 singers) and Charles-Edouard FANTIN (guitarist/lutenist).
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