Scoreboards and whistles: the stage is set for a match… that won’t go as expected. Drawing on the carnivals of her childhood in Cape Verde, Marlene Monteiro Freitas — guest artist at the 2025 Festival d’Avignon — prefers to subvert order entirely. Canine Jaunâtre 3 becomes an absurd and hilariously strange Lego game. Twenty-five dancers, all wearing identical number 3 jerseys, with robotic bodies and cartoonish faces, follow conflicting rules and logic. These magnificent virtuosos with no apparent goal, interchangeable yet totally unique, build, destroy, advance, retreat. They gradually draw humanity into a strange territory, where the lines between man, beast, and machine are blurred.
Set to a soundtrack of iconic hits, from Nina Simone to Amy Winehouse, this is training for the mind, a way to question our overly comfortable perceptions. And most of all, a wild challenge led by a virtuoso choreographer, with the full force of the Lyon Opera Ballet behind her.