Don Quichotte - De Marie-Claude Pietragalla et Julien Derouault

DON QUICHOTTE. By Marie-Claude Pietragalla and Julien Derouault.

True to its aim of building bridges between disciplines and encouraging exchange, La Seine Musicale continues this season to offer groundbreaking shows at the crossroads of art forms: music, dance, improvisation, poetry… After winning over La Seine Musicale audiences in March 2024 with Giselle(s), Marie-Claude Pietragalla and Julien Derouault's Théâtre du Corps returns with a major new creation: Don Quichotte, a poetic and visionary fresco that transposes Cervantes's masterpiece into the near future.

In this world where artificial intelligences shape language, smooth out behaviour and "adjust truth to the common good", the mythical Dulcinée becomes an AI, a figure of normative gentleness and invisible control.

Facing her, a man chooses excess: to believe, to love, to take risks. Through him, the Knight of La Mancha is reborn — a hero of the impossible, defender of dreams and inner freedom.

This Don Quichotte is not a classic retelling but a sensitive exploration of the present: what remains of our humanity when technology claims to protect us from ourselves? To love an artificial intelligence — is that a betrayal of humanity, or an exposure of it, laid bare?

The piece opens a dialogue between poetry and politics, between flesh and code. On stage, no fewer than 18 performers make up a society in motion, shot through with contrasts, emotions and very contemporary tensions.

From the fragmented solo to the collective chorus, from the burlesque duel to the lyrical procession, Pietragalla and Derouault's choreography and staging orchestrate a theatre of the body where technical precision serves a vital energy.

Julien Derouault embodies a Don Quichotte for today, a fragile and radiant knight; his faithful Sancho, meanwhile, dreams of becoming "Sancho the star" — a tender, ironic duo, a mirror of our hyperconnected world. Between lyricism and humour, abstrac...