Il pleut, il plaint, il rage

Il pleut, il plaint, il rage is a solo about anger building up in the body while the world around it remains unchanged. Charles Brecard begins with a sense of helplessness in the face of social and civilisational crises, asking what happens when reason, morality and our ability to act begin to fail. Rather than unfolding as a linear narrative, this inner pressure takes shape through a series of physical and visual transformations: from a monk into a dissolving creature, from grotesque faces into the figure of a conqueror, from tenderness into rage and back again. The body is constantly tested by the tension between control and chaos. Vulnerability, violence, pain and resistance accumulate within it.

Brecard builds the piece through intense physicality, but also through a striking restraint: a facial expression, a glance or a small gesture can become as powerful as an explosive movement. The jury of the Internationales Solo Tanz Theater Stuttgart praised the choreography for its attention to detail, powerful narrative and clarity of intention, highlighting Brecard’s ability to transform while maintaining intensity. Tanznet described the piece as revealing cracks in an apparently ordered bourgeois façade and highlighted its exploration of the power of non-verbal communication. Il pleut, il plaint, il rage becomes a physical outlet for what usually remains beneath the surface—anger, pain, absurdity and the desire for change. And perhaps also a space in which all of this can, for a moment, take form.

The 2026 edition further strengthens the festival's commitment to regional artistic mobility. In collaboration with Festival Krila (Rijeka), Platformof contemporary dance (Maribor) and Zagreb Dance Festival, selected artists — Rebecca Margolick, Ching-Ying Chien and Charles Brecard — will continue their presentations and workshops beyond Ljubljana through a regional tour.

Ching-Ying Chieng, Rebecca Margolick, Charles Brecard
THREE FACES OF RESTLESTNESS 
@ Rijeka, Ljubljana, Maribor, Zagreb

Three solo performances by three exceptional international dance artists are connected by an exploration of unrest—from stories and experiences passed down through generations, through anger and human fragility, to the desire to take flight and the confrontation with one’s own mortality. Rebecca Margolick (Canada), Charles Brecard (Canada) and Ching-Ying Chieng (Taiwan, United Kingdom) each explore, in their own way, those moments when the body can no longer remain in the same state: when restraint begins to move, when silence turns into anger, or when the desire for freedom collides with the limits of the body itself. Their works meet in different forms of unrest—in what remains trapped, in what erupts, and in what longs to take flight.