Columbia University Department of Music

This is a work about sonder and encounter. It’s about kaleidoscopic conversations and collaged memory. It’s about how we speak and move with ourselves and with one another. Through an evening length work which invites the audience to participate in a web of creative exchanges, we embrace a series of unanswerable questions on the nature of being: how do we navigate competing or contradictory fragments of ourselves? How might we find resonances between the dispersed parts of ourselves? What does it mean to be present with others unknown? Where in the entanglement might we meet? How do we understand the layers and fragments of our memory?  What does it mean to witness?

MeMoSa: Fragments for One

Barnard College

Jacques Demy followed up The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with another musical about missed connections and second chances, this one a more effervescent confection. Twins Delphine and Solange, a dance instructor and a music teacher (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac), long for big-city life; when a fair comes through their quiet port town, so does the possibility of escape. With its jazzy Michel Legrand score, pastel paradise of costumes, and divine supporting cast (George Chakiris, Grover Dale, Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, and Gene Kelly), The Young Girls of Rochefort is a tribute to Hollywood optimism from sixties French cinema’s preeminent dreamer.

View trailer here

Walter Frisch and Jane Gaines return to the Maison Française for this final event of the year as a sequel to their lively and informative discussion of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in May 2025.

Walter Frisch is H. Harold Gumm/Harry and Albert von Tilzer Professor of Music at Columbia University in New York, and an aficionado of the films of Jacques Demy.

Jane M. Gaines is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Columbia University with a deep knowledge of French cinema.

Event Details & Important Information
This event is free and open to the public, but please note that registration does not guarantee a seat. We intentionally overbook our events, and seating is first come, first served. We recommend arriving early.

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