There'd be singing, dancing, story telling. These were joyous moments of freedom, that released the animal side of our natures and allowed us to be carried away by total physical release. Hence the tigers, flamingos,goats and goldfish in the imaginary garden that is Le Jardin's back projections. The transposed human heads, however, like the whirling clock, the gargling, are all symptomatic of Montalvo's penchant for Dadaism - and for the collages of surrealist maestro Max Ernst in particular. Io Io Ito Ito, then, is the cry that Ernst's birdheaded men and women make.
Man is an animal.
Art exists to play with this animal side and transform it into color, beauty and emotion. Le Jardin expresses all of that with humor. The work has a distinct French sensibility, he adds. There is a way of speaking of tragic things with lightness, which is a reflection of our identity right now. Being based in the multiethnic Parisian suburb of Creteil, meant the choreographers needed look no further than their own backyard when casting.