When we look at the videos posted by Andréa Bescond on Instagram, what is striking is her energy and her good humor. She is indignant, that's for sure: when she demonstrates in front of the Ministry of Justice, Place Vendôme, she breaks her voice, she raises her fist. Every Monday evening, she mobilizes for the comprehensive bill against sexual violence, examined in the National Assembly.
In several videos filmed indoors, we also notice behind her a poster of Rocky, the most stubborn of boxers. No doubt, she is ready to fight but with a smile. Andréa Bescond has joyful anger and when we ask her about her commitment, she even becomes enthusiastic.
"What's beautiful is this popular movement! Finally civil society is standing up! We held demonstrations with ten people for years... There were ten of us! Today, there are thousands, thousands and thousands of us all over the country, overseas, everywhere! And that's magnificent," she says.
In fact, Andréa Bescond packs a punch even when she recounts her drama. She was 9 years old when she began to be raped by a friend of her parents. Then, there is traumatic amnesia and in adolescence, memories begin to come back. One day, at 17, she was in the street in the small town of Tarn-et-Garonne where she spent part of her childhood, when she froze. She sees her rapist and it comes back to her like a boomerang.
“Suddenly but then without warning… everything comes back to you… Bam!”
Andréa Bescond, actress and director at franceinfo
The first rape dates from January 1, 1989. At dawn, she sleeps next to her little brother and has very vivid memories of him. "You everything! The gestures, the voice, the smells, the setting, she tells the InPower podcast. “I remember looking at my brother sleeping there, I remember that there were his sons sleeping at the other end of the room, I remember the total context, I remember that it was this fucking New Year, that he had convinced my parents that we had to stay and sleep there because he had planned his move!”
Andréa Bescond ends up filing a complaint. Her rapist, who made other victims, is sentenced to 10 years in prison. We are then in 2006, at the time she was 27 years old and there she was sinking. As she always does everything to the fullest, she sinks completely… She drinks excessively, smokes “15 bangers a day”. In her life, she tried everything, even heroin.
In 2014, she unpacked everything at the theater. Only one on stage that she wrote as a physical performance. For an hour and a half she jumps, athletic, muscular, from one character to another, in turn the victim, the mother, the friend, the doctor, the policeman, the rapist. Even if, as usual, Andréa Bescond allows herself derision and humor, she admits that every evening she has the impression of getting into a ring.
The title of this play, crowned by a Molière and which would later be adapted for the cinema winning two Césars: The Tickles or the Dance of Anger. Because ever since she walked, Andréa Bescond has been dancing.
“I throw the energy, like that, in the air”
On his CV, the prestigious Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. She learned the dance of anger in the mid-2000s on the street in Los Angeles. It's called Krump. “Hop the arm it goes there, I take the knee, bam! I do a clack clack head turn! It comes back and there, bam! I throw the energy, like that, in the air!” she details in the podcast The voice of the body
It's intense, explosive. The dancers face each other in a circle. Perfect for her peaceful warrior temperament. “Everyone motivates each other and it’s relatively benevolent. And sometimes it's not. Sometimes all of a sudden it’s: ‘you, you tell yourself a little bit and well you know what, I’m going to take you and look at me and then I’m going to show you!’” explains the actress.
