“I like to say that I am a fairy.” Romain Brau, a protean artist who electrifies stage and screen

At the age of 12, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, the character The baron sat downby Italo Calvino, left the table exclaiming: “I said I don’t want to and I don’t want to.” That same day, he decided to lead a life that was different from the one society had chosen for him by climbing a tree from which he would view the world with a new perspective until the end of his days. “Through this cheeky image, I addressed the theme of freedom and human transcendence, the essence of which lies in eternal transformation,” Calvino explained. In Romain Brau’s shows, we find the same brazenness as Cosimo’s: a mad desire to transform himself and break codes to access the rebellious conscience. Pleasure, first of all.

Seeing this singer, performer and actor on stage is always met with intelligence, sensuality, transgression, self-doubt, melancholy. Each text echoes the other, the songs echo, connect like the branches of trees. Balanced precariously on 16cm Louboutin pumps atop playful constructions on stage, Romain Braun pronounces poetry lyrics about our society. He sings, moves and entertains the audience with a non-stop series of transformations that go through the voice as much as the body.

The path of otherness

This nocturnal bird, a protean artist, always fascinates with its long feathers of different colors. Throughout the shows he’s been on (such as the weekend headlined Chaillot Experience #3 – cabarets November 21-23 at the Théâtre de Châlot in Paris), she appears like a strange creature straight out of a Dali painting: long, flaming hair, a ballerina’s head carriage and an androgynous look. From his frail and feminine silhouette emerges an enchanting baritone voice that portrays the imaginary world inhabited by the characters he takes turns playing. Through her glamorous guises, she champions the fluidity of identity and asserts the art of cross-dressing as a performance beyond gender.

Trained in Paris at the Madame Arthur cabaret, which he helped relaunch in 2015 (while continuing his other artistic projects) and where he regularly performs, he appeals to the public “with a desire to convey the values ​​of tolerance and self-acceptance. he says. Inspired by Kafka, Nabokov, Flaubert, and Ovid, as well as the American photographer Cindy Sherman, Romain Brown advocates the concept of metamorphosis as an engine of freedom; “A person asks himself the question ‘Who am I?’ and observes that the unity of “I” is not evident.

The most important and important moment in my life as an artist is when I dared to lose my orientation by working on my fluidity.

Romain Brau

He then sees transformation as “fiction, a creative path that allows us to approach the subjectivity of being.” And to discover yourself in this way of otherness… “The most important and important moment of my life as an artist is the moment when I dared to lose my orientations, working on my fluidity,” he continues. Everyone should work on this. This will avoid many irreconcilable views, beliefs born of fear. And unacceptable behavior.”

Universal talent

Passionate about painting and fashion since childhood, the son of a Parisian figure skating instructor and osteopath wrote his life script by rejecting a boring model. , he says. But the pink and blue shadows of the strange faces of Egon Schiele’s paintings attracted me much more than the codes of the designed world. “In his teenage years, his aunt Lily became his model. “She was a kind of eccentric Lulu de La Falaise, wearing outfits by Christian Lacroix, Martin Margiela or Jean Paul Gaultier, paired with huge African jewelry,” she recalls. At the age of 19, he joined the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, in the fashion department.

His next-door neighbors then become chrysalises: the Georgian Demna Gvasalia, the current artistic director of Balenciaga, and the Belgian Glenn Martens, today known for his deconstruction of genres. A polymorphic creature with a luxurious aura, both female and male, Romain Brau captures the eye of avant-garde haute couture. After graduating, she began a career as a model for Dries Van Noten, Versace and Roberto Cavalli and began producing stage wear for the dance and music worlds. His sculptural and imaginative creations cover the bodies of Lana Del Rey, singers from La Femme, or colossal dancers like Marie-Agnes Gillot and François Chenault (with whom he is currently producing two shows, one at Chaillot and the other at the Louvre).

Performance discipline

A dancer herself, after a long course of figure skating since age 6, she explored the performance discipline, performing at Art Basel and the Venice Biennale with choreographers like Ryan Heffington. Being noticed by the directors, he also started an acting career. Glitter shrimpA comedy about a gay water polo team by Cédric Le Gallo and Maxime Gouverre, released in 2019 and starring Nathalie Baie High fashionBy Sylvie Ohio in 2021. At this moment, he multiplies the projects and even appears in the serial. Franklin (Apple TV+) worn by Michael Douglas.

He plays Chevalier d’Éon, an 18th century French spy.^e century, who spent the next thirty-two years of his life dressed as a man and as a woman. “Man or woman, what does it matter?” I like to say I’m a fairy. To be magical is to transform, to adapt,” says Romain Brown in a tone full of Warholian humor. This same tone that runs through the songs on his first album, the self-titled i am tomorrowpunctuated by danceable techno and the wildly freewheeling colors of pop art, which he will stage on October 8 at the Olympia in Paris.

“I’m Tomorrow” album, a French parade, was released on October 4. On October 8, with a concert in Olympia, Paris.