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The Yôkaï company creates Echo(e)s, with the support of the Institut français
Published on 10 July 2025
In Echo(e)s, compagnie Yôkai invents a visual poem, a puppet form for dancer and creatures. This mysterious creation, conceived as a two-way proposition, questions hybridity, the visible and the invisible in an innovative show. It is supported by the French Institute through the IF Export program.
A company with a powerful visual identity
In October 2014, Violaine Fimbel, puppeteer and visual artist, decided to create the Yôkaï company, a term that refers to a Japanese monster but also means a supernatural phenomenon. Within the company, she has developed a body of work that explores the boundary between what makes us human and what makes us a creature, using a puppetry approach. The company's artistic identity then develops in disturbing visual universes, with fantastical forms taken from Violaine Fimbel's imagination or extracted from the visual arts and literature.
A visual poem
Echo(e)s unfolds like a visual poem, taking place in two places at the same time, in a similar space. It is a puppet form for dancer and creatures, imagined as a two-entry proposition, where two actions play out simultaneously and respond to each other. In this mysterious creation, a hybrid creature and its double converse and re-animate each other with the help of a danced presence, sometimes visible and sometimes invisible.
An innovative technique
Thanks to Echo(e)s, the Yôkai company invites viewers into a liminal place where what was thought to have disappeared comes "back to life". Drawing on tools from the world of cinema, a remote control system enables different creatures to interact and respond to each other, creating an unprecedented mode of animation that opens up new magical possibilities. In this way, the creation offers a singular spectacular form outdoors, something that the yet hybridized techniques used in the company's previous creations prohibited.
A support from the IF Export program
As part of the Villa Albertine program, several members of the Yokaï company were in residence in New York in the spring of 2024. The project will run from January 2025 to June 2026, including two stages of work in New York. The creation benefits from the support of the French Institute through the IF Export program, which accompanies French or France-based creators and cultural partners internationally, for projects involving dissemination, cooperation or presence at major prescriptor events.
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