A theatrical and musical performance exploring death and its rites, by the company Le Désert en Ville. Duration: 90 min., followed by a conversation with the artists. MEG Auditorium, June 26 at 7 pm.
MEG x ADEM
L’ENVEILLÉE
A theatrical and vocal performance exploring death and its rites
During a residency at the Museum of Ethnography Geneva in December 2023, the artistic team behind L’Enveillée immersed themselves in the AIMP (International Archives of Popular Music), listening to songs from around the world devoted to funeral rites. In June 2026, they return to present the performance that emerged, in part, from this research.
Upon a ground of raw sheets, four voices rise — in breath, in nakedness. No recorded music, no artifice: the singing comes from the body, from memory, from presence. L’Enveillée is a performance at the threshold of the sacred, nourished by a profound meditation on death and its rites, and on the function of song and the human voice. Through a vibrant vocal score, it questions our relationship to disappearance: what remains when breath fades? What is transmitted by singing alongside the dead?
Far from pathos, this poetic theatre seeks the essence of ritual: to console, to connect, to transform. A sensory and intimate journey — from cry to appeasement, from mourning to renewal — in which the audience is invited, too, to keep vigil over its own humanity.
The performance will be followed by a conversation with Juliette Kempf, director; Fiorenza Gamba, socio-anthropologist at University of Geneva and member of the Centre International des Études sur la Mort (CIEM); and Victor Randrianary, anthropologist and musicologist specializing in the islands of the Indian Ocean.
Concept, writing and direction: Juliette Kempf
Performers: Roxane Palazzotto, Sylvain Manet, Victor Parente, Carole Verhaeghe
Vocal preparation: Sylvain Manet
Lighting: Isabelle Ardouin
Costumes: Pauline Bourguignon
Ceramics: Nicolas Barbera
Distribution: Maria-Sophie Boizard
Production: Le Désert en Ville
Gratuit mais sur réservation à l'adresse suivante : juliette.jamey@adem.ch
