WE compagnie is where Vilma is working together. It believes that the mouvement has the potential for talking about the world or building temporary ways of being otherwise. It thinks of making performances as a radical social proposition, a great camouflage for doing subversive, illicite things, such as not participating in some systems – economic, hierarchich, familial.
Based on collective work ideas, WE cie was created inside the National Theater of Strasbourg corridors, where Vilma Pitrinaitė was studying theater directing and Thomas Pondevie – dramaturgy. Together they iniciated WE compagnie in order to question the bodily and narrative logics inherent to a contemporary performance.
Their first project “In every man, there are two who dance” inspired by I.Viripaev’s « Oxygène » and the ballet Swan lake, was staged at festival JT14, Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris and festival Premières, Maillon, Strasbourg. This show was born from the pleasure of playing between two disciplines, theater and dance. Three materials guided the directors’ research: Oxygène, a text emblematic of the movement called “New Russian writings”, which began in the 1990s, Swan Lake, ballet composed at the end of the 19th century, and, finally, the storyboard of a short film imagined by Vilma Pitrinaite. They partially rewrote the text and the music, re-exploited the classical ballet, diverted the original fictions. Other materials, brought by the whole team (improvisations, music, monologues) were then added. All these pieces ended up composing together an autonomous, organic and rhythmic machine.
„Miss Lithuania“, the second project of the company, Vilma’s solo, confronts certain codes and stereotypes in circulation today that the so-called commercial forms have perfectly integrated and of which we are the daily spectators. This detour by the Miss World contest, the pastiche of dominant cutural forms is a precious tool for We compagnie and a symptom of the state of our society. „Miss Lithuania“ participated in the Aerowaves Spring Forward’15 and is still touring in Europe and USA. “With this proposal, we feel that we are dealing with high-quality aesthetic and dramaturgical research,” wrote Estelle Moulard-Delhaye after a performance in Paris, at „Confluences“ theatre, where “Miss Lithuania” was nominated for the best performance of the season.
In 2020, WE compagnie does not abandon the ambition to be a collective where the dancers are both choreographers and performers, music author may influence dramaturgy while the dramaturge may also take care of costumes or visuals. Doing so We cie holds on to a research-based and intersectoral approach. The two recent projects of WE cie – “Somaholidays” and “MATCH 2” are both conceptual, radical and propose unexpected choreographical materials. “Somaholidays” transposes choreographic forms and rituals of nightclubs and “MATCH 2” explores the competition through grotesque displays of ego and aggression, connecting the social, the animal, and the national. And the current research investigates on the figure of a rebel.