dancing the space - Centre National du Théâtre

Transcription

stradda
dossier #6 - february 2010
DANCING THE SPACE
le magazine de la création hors les murs
dossier from stradda #14 / page 1
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contents / editorial
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At the crossroads of genres
Step by step, dancers come together on both sides of the Alps
Chalon dances in the street
Bodies in construction
Rue de la danse, promenade chorégraphique
“Coming into contact with the elements, water, earth and
mud”, interview ith Françoise Léger, Ilotopie
The outdoor adventure
Grand Master Decouflé
stradda
le magazine de la création hors les murs
DANCING THE SPACE
Dancing the space
dossier #6 - february 2010
DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATION
Jean Digne
CHIEF EDITORS
Jean Digne – Stéphane Simonin
REDACTION
Fabienne Arvers, Rosita Boisseau,
Sylvie Clidière, Frédéric Khan,
Alix de Morant
IMAGES
Gorka Bravo, Florent Lanquetin,
Petr Lovigin, Vincent Muteau,
Laurent Paillier / photodanse.
com, Jean-Luc Petit, Sigma
Project Quartet, Dominique
Thieulin
TRANSLATION
Brian Quinn
COORDINATION
Isabelle Drubigny, Yohann Floch
COPYEDITOR
Peggy Tardrew
ILLUSTRATIONS
Marie Le Moigne
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Anne Choffey
editorial
W
e are pleased to present you
with Stradda magazine’s sixth
dossier “Dancing the space”.
The European professionals of the circus
and street arts have often expressed a wish
to have access to publications and documentary resources that are easily accessible
and translated into several languages.
These resources are useful on many
levels: beyond the necessary exposure
given to artistic projects, they also serve
to inform policymakers, institutions and
sponsors on these innovative aesthetics.
Stradda, a quarterly magazine published
in French by HorsLesMurs –national
resource centre for the street and circus
arts– is the only magazine that is entirely
dedicated to creation in the public space
and the contemporary circus. The corres-
PUBLICITY
Violette Bernad –
diff[email protected]
pondents of the Circostrada Network platform naturally turned to this particularly
well-identified publication to, every other
month, translate into English and publish
online the thematic reports to appear with
the magazine.
We hope that this new dossier will participate in creating an easier circulation of
ideas and artistic projects. We also hope
that it will add to the overall debate and
bring to light the great vitality of the circus
and street arts.
Jean Digne.
Director of Publication
Stéphane Simonin.
Chief Editor
Yohann Floch.
Coordinator of Circostrada Network
+33 (0)1 55 28 10 09
This project has been funded with support from the European
Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only
of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any
use which may be made of the information contained therein.
circostrada network
circostrada network
Circostrada Network – street arts and circus arts
European platform for information, research and
professional exchanges
Circostrada Network works towards the development
and structuring of the circus arts and street arts on the
European scale. Although these sectors represent a dynamic
contribution to the European arts, they are in need of
a common forum to allow for collaboration, discussion
and professional representation at the European level.
Founded in 2003 by HorsLesMurs and composed of over 30
correspondents, the network contributes to the sharing of
information and resources within these artistic milieus by
favouring encounters and co-operation between European
professionals and by carrying out common actions to further
the recognition of these artistic forms.
Circostrada Network
c/o HorsLesMurs – 68, rue de la Folie Méricourt – 75011 Paris – France
T. +33 (0)1 55 28 10 10 – F. +33 (0)1 55 28 10 11
[email protected]
www.circostrada.org
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dossier
dancing the space
© PETR LOVIGIN
NEW TERRAIN FOR CHOREOGRAPHERS
Fall in Love,
a series of photos
by Petr Lovigin for
two dancers in love
(2005-2008).
● DOSSIER COORDINATED
BY ALIX DE MORANT
O
utdoor dance is not a genre in itself, but rather an ensemble of very
current strategies and preoccupations that forces us into contact with
realities on the ground by creating temporary communities incorporated
under an artistic message. To be or not to be a show is not the crucial question,
and we can see dancers reacting to all kinds of contexts. In natural settings,
museums, cities or in the country, dance is present and resonant. Sometimes it
may even alter, critique or document the place that it occupies. It is an invitation
to move and to shift frameworks, a direct address to the body of the other, to
the spectator that we would like to emancipate1. Today we can only welcome the
spread of a movement that mixes all sensibilities, compelling dancers to step out
into the street.
1. Jacques Rancière, Le Spectateur émancipé, La Fabrique, 2008.
The Sigma
Project
Quartet at the
inauguration of
the Evocation of
the image of the
woman exhibit,
at the Joan-Miró
Museum, Palma
de Mallorca,
December 2008.
At the crossroads of genres
Choreographers want fresh air. They drag their troupes out into the street
and into gardens and museums. And the now multi-network domain of
dance is finding a wider audience.
T
Alix de Morant.
A dancer and
graduate of the
International
School of Jacques
Lecoq, since the
1990’s her research
has focused on
artistic nomadism
and choreography
in the public
space. She is a
partner of the
research workshop
on intermediality
and the performing
arts (Arias, CNRS)
and has
contributed to the
publications Les
Ecrans sur la scène
(1998, L’Âge
d’homme) and
Butô(s). She also
runs the Reading
and Writing
Contemporary
Dance workshop at
the University of
Lyon II.
he cross-border public space interests all sorts
of choreographers. Young companies such as
Jeanne Simone or Antipodes are doing without
indoor performance spaces and putting themselves to
the test outdoors. Break-dancers, if they gain access to
the stage through institutional recognition, soon feel
the need to return to the street. They need to breathe
in the asphalt, where their expressions come into direct
contact with the territory and they are able to meet,
more often than on stage, the problems or aspirations
of immigrant diasporas1. The presence of dancers in
the street is far from being a simple trend, but rather
reflects a desire to step out of a format. Their wish to
put themselves on the line traces back to the neutrality of an affirmed, pedestrian body of the 1970’s in
New York by the Judson Church (Trisha Brown, Steve
Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti). In France,
after the freedom of the 1980’s and with the start of
the 1990’s, the movement to regroup choreographic
actors (the Signataires du 20 aôut, Espace Commun,
regional collectives) placed emphasis on a relationship
with politicians and the lack of openness on behalf
of national choreographic centres. They thus greatly
favoured a return to the in situ.
Hybridisation. Dance training provides a mix of
elements, assimilating the martial arts, techniques of
yoga and qi-gong and the kinaesthetic discoveries of
Body-Mind Centring as the parameters for contact
improvisation. Since Mudra2 and straight up to
PARTS3, pedagogy has drawn from African and Asian
sources as well as from the American pool of influences. And schools – such as the Centre National des
Arts du Cirque (CNAC) – that use choreographers
in their educational programmes have contributed
to the hybridisation of training. It is not surprising
to find in the last summer season of the Transforme
programme, (led by Myriam Gourfink at Royaumont4), a Swiss performer, an Indian dancer, two
circus artists (including the trapeze artist Clémence
Coconnier) or Anatoli Vlassov, founder, with Julie
Salgues, of the IDCore company. The Nigerian
Qudus Onikeku, who graduated from CNAC in
2008 and performed for Heddy Maalem, has left the
circuit of international tours behind for the disorder of
a street-world, the asphalt and dirt of Johannesburg,
Yaoundé or Cairo. His black and white company YK
now performs Ewa Bami’jo (Come Dance With Me)
in Lagos, an event that occurs every other year and
brings together performers from all over Africa.
Oscillations.
Dance or street, the question
forces a great gap and compels dancers to oscillate
from one network to another. There are continued
misunderstandings between companies called “street”
companies, since that is where they began, and others,
which have come to the public space in search of a
new market to win over as a processual composition. After envisioning overviews of the city, Osmosis Company returns to the black box, whereas since
Passants, Ex Nihilo has reinserted feedback from its
experience into the theatre or gallery spaces. Transports Exceptionnels, by the Beau Geste Company,
or the Miniatures of Nathalie Pernette, could serve
as a link between two networks that do not know
each other well, that of dance and that of street arts.
© SIGMA PROJECT QUARTET
dancing
the space
From the programmers’ point of view, artists’ desire to
create out-of-the-norm gatherings must be taken into
consideration. Certain national performance spaces,
such as the Cratère in Alès, influenced by the dancer
Bernard Glandier, encourage extra mural initiatives.
For Denis Lafaurie, the director of Cratère, the role
of any supporting figure is to find the location that
makes sense: the Alès museum for Daniel Dobbels,
or the Saint Sophia Basilica in Istanbul for Christine
Jouve. Remarkable gardens (Barbirey-sur-Ouche in
Côte-d’Or, the Potager du Roi in Versailles), parks
at art centres (Chamarande in Essonne, Vassivière
in the Creuse, the Villa Gilet in Lyon) have brought
together choreographers to highlight their locality
or region. The transversal and atypical Festival de
l’Oh in Val-de-Marne and the Envies Rhônements
in Camarque bring together these pathways of arts
that allow the audience to enjoy a natural setting.
These courses are most often found in rural areas and
mix visual and choreographic installations, sound art
or poetry. It is also worth mentioning here L’Art des
Corps in Lagorce, Ardèche or the humble Festival De
Presque Rien organised in Thoronet, Centre-Var by
La Compagnie de l’Imparfait. Dance, which is linked
to the past of performance, in a relationship that it
perceives as favouring the visual arts, has no specific
place. Rare are the spaces conceived for it alone5, and
the inherited models of theatrical decentralisation
are not enough to contain its unfurling. Dance is
winning over museums and temporarily occupying
churches and castles. Events such as the all night Nuits
Blanches6, or festivals in support of cities, such as Les
Tombées de la Nuit in Rennes, call for choreographers
to attract the audience through shared dances or active
markets. The Festival of Marseille, Montpellier Dance,
Agitato in Rennes, or Les Antipodes in Brest partner
local companies with their in situ sections to allow
their territory to shine. Since 2008, and as an echo of
the end of Dance in Aix, the opening of street festivals
to dance is a notable one. At Viva Cité in 2009, for
example, it led to the conjunction of strange attractors, when Les Gens de Couleur by Ilotopie evoked the
same silent restraint as the butoh performer Yukiko
Nakamura. The sudden appearance of a bare body
pierces the space and sharpens our outlook. The audience is open to the shift and expects it.
Vibrations.
Initiated at the international level
by the Barcelonans of Dies de Dansa in 1997, the
Ciudades que Danzan network (see Stradda n°10)
is also offering an alternative. Understanding the
mediating value of an artistic gesture at the level of
the urban backdrop, this network, which aids in the
development of hip-hop, brings together dance and
spatiality and unites choreographers and architects, all
the while emphasizing the exchange between different
regions of the world. Well-established in Spain, Latin
America and Italy, it also hosts cities of Northern
Europe, such as Manchester, or Malmo. In defiance of
weather concerns, Urban Moves in Manchester occupies the industrial patrimony and tends to emphasize the educational aspect, bringing choreographers
into educational settings, stadiums or prisons. On a
smaller scale, and supported by the Irene K. company,
Danse en Ville, the cross-border festival of Vervier in
Belgium, has, since 2007, been developing a collaboration with La Ruée vers l’art in Grenoble and Corpi
Urbani in Gênes, Italy. For the 2009 edition, dancers
and visual artists took possession of shop windows in
the quiet little German-speaking city of Eupen, and
the shows spilled out into the street. For dancers, the
outdoor experiment is never far from the sensorial
approach, by which one creates and affirms an individual form of composition and style. And this space
that dance takes over, in return helps it to define itself,
and to find its place in history. ● ALIX DE MORANT
1. Ciudades que
danzan magazine,
ed. Hiphop special
edition, no 2, 2009.
2. In 1970, Maurice
Béjart founded the
Mudra school in
Brussels and Mudra
Africa in Dakar in
1977 (see Stradda
no 8, Africa special
edition).
3. PARTS. Studios
opened in Brussels
in 1995, by the
initiative of the
Rosas company.
www.parts.be
4. Retraite à
Royaumont,
Le Monde,
14 August 2009.
5. See Espaces de
Danse, Repères,
Cahiers de Danse
no 8, Nov. 2006.
And Francoise
Fromonot, Le
pavillon noir flotte
sur la marmite,
Criticat no 2,
Spring 2009.
6. In 2003, City
of Abstracts by
William Forsythe
called Parisians to
participate in an
interactive game.
Step by step, dancers come together on both sides of the Alps
Around Lyon, Marseille, Turin and Genoa, a network is forming that integrates dance into the public space.
It is well known that networks
need leads. The implementation
of the Alps-Mediterranean Euroregion, although politically on
shaky ground, has opened up
the possibility of French and
Italian regions coming together;
in this case, PACA, RhônesAlpes, Piedmont, Liguria and the
Aosta Valley. In Marseille, Lieux
Publics, the National Centre for
Street Arts Creation, seized the
opportunity to open a larger
public space for the dance arts.
A friendly network of FrancoItalian operators is thus coming
into existence. On the French
side, there is Les Hivernales in
Avignon, the Centre Chorégraphique National in Rillieux-laPape – Maguy Marin and the
Ateliers Frappaz in Villeurbanne.
On the Italian side, the network
includes the Corpi Urbani
festival in Gênes and three
Turin-based structures: two
festivals (Interplay, dedicated to
contemporary dance, and Teatro
a Corte) and the association
C’era l’Acca (a member of In Situ,
another European network dedicated to art in the public space).
Common market. Five short
pieces will be created as part of
“Small is Beautiful”, encouraged
by Lieux Publics and connected
to Marseille Provence 2013. Two
French companies (Ex Nihilo
and Lézards Bleus – Antoine
Le Ménestrel) and three Italian
companies (Ubidanza, Il Cantiere,
Koine) worked together on the
theme of the “Common Market”.
They will each take turns
dancing with passers-by, fruits,
vegetables and market vendors
in Martigues and Aubagne in
the Bouches-du-Rhône region.
Performances will then circulate
among the markets of Turin,
Gênes, Avignon and Lyon (in
2010). ● FRÉDÉRIC KAHN
Chalon dances in the street
This year the street arts festival paid homage to the dance arts. Between the delirious
parades and pyrotechnics, one found choreography that was intimate, poignant and at times
violent, and where spectators were also invited to recreate their own perception of the world.
Senza Tempo,
“A +, cosas que
nunca te conté”
Chalon dans la
rue, 2009.
C
halon, July 2009. Scattered memories came
to me as soon as I got off the train: Trajets de
Vie, Trajets de Ville, quai de la Poterne and
Place Ronde, the homage to Josephine Baker in the
and gentlemen aussi among the market stalls, Les
Noces de Trottoir, place Sainte-Marthe, the mystical
whirling of Ziya Azazi at the foot of the cathedral...
They remind us how multi-faceted outdoor choreography is and how, almost without any theatrical
artifice, it reveals and opens the imagination up to
the material and human environment.
This year, the festival honours dance. Its director, Pedro Garcia, affirms this choice: We have to
get dance out of the indoor performance spaces and
allow a taste to those who are having a hard time
pushing the door open1. The five invited companies
in the in section are representative of choreography
today, which includes hip-hop and acrobatic dance
and voluntarily uses images. The off section will host
a wide variety of artists, as should be seen here. The
programme will include a discussion section in the
form of two brunchstormings 2 on the history of
outdoor dance and its relationship with the location
where it takes place, both being full of emotion and
lines of questioning.
Conjugating the intimate
and the great, festive moment
But dance is not everything in Chalon. The festival
opened up with Babel, a fantastic pyrotechnic opera
by the Belgian company Attrape. It closed with the
magical feather invasion of the Place des Anges by
the Studios de Cirque of Marseille. All were in a
state of wonder as the delighted audience gathered
about. Another day, they are carried through the city
by the delirious Tour de France of Générik Vapeur,
© JEAN-LUC PETIT
dancing
the space
Sylvie Clidière.
Trained through
her travels and
studies, she has
alternated
between cultural
activism,
theatrical
collaboration and
teaching, notably
with the Ecole
Nationale
Supérieure des
Beaux-Arts in
Bourges. She
discusses the
progression of the
street arts through
various revues and
seminars. Since
2002, she has been
associated with
Lieux Publics, the
Dansem festival
and the network
Ciudades Que
Danzan and is also
interested in
outdoor dance.
or carried off by the whistle blowing roaming of
KompleXKapharnaüM, whose images cover the
walls, calling for a refusal of submission. None of
this was found in the choreographic offerings. We
are not seized or called upon, and we are rarely asked
to participate in the burlesque games of the street
arts. We are rather compelled to enter individually
and without a passport, into autonomous worlds
that are often located outside of the city centres.
Senza Tempo and t.r.a.n.s.i.t.s.c.a.p.e chose as their
scenic backdrop the caravan, a metaphor and tool
for a state of wandering. The first, a compartment
for everyday life, becomes a screen on which we see
the memories and fantasies of characters in transit.
The images frame and prolong a tumultuous dance
of fits and starts. A steward angel surveys the wild
parade.
T.r.a.n.s.i.t.s.c.a.p.e’s mechanism is more sophisticated. In the privacy of a hotel room, a boxer, a
call girl and a cleaning lady engage in sadomasochistic games. We see them through a window or
through a narrow slit, sometimes captured in a tight
shot. With headphones, we listen to an interview
with a real boxer. Beyond the evident voyeurism,
we find in this Chambre(s) d’Hôtel an analysis of
our relationship with the real and its representations. The image box of La Lloba, for Windoll, a
boutique and its front window, becomes a receptacle for an addiction to clothing. The two dancers
look at themselves while getting ready and try to
become fashion models. Little by little everything
shifts. The clothing piles up to the point of nausea
onto the young woman. Her companion covers
her body with sticky advertisements and everything
reaches a state of frenzy with the naked bodies under
a stroboscopic light. Reduction to nudity is also the
object of Oignons, one of the Miniatures by Nathalie Pernette, place Saint-Vincent, at the heart of the
festival. Four dancers covered with overlapped skin
peels strip each other slowly as the gesture becomes
a danced form. In front of the cathedral, what could
turn into a strip tease becomes a sacrificial ceremony.
All of the Miniatures of the choreography are signed:
timeless black costumes, passive faces, very graphic
gestures. Even outside of the show, the dancers are
identified as strange passers-by.
We are going to offer dance
in all of its states
The dancer’s body is not neutral. It produces
meaning. Beyond the nameable and aesthetic
forms, and especially outdoors, it is its relationship
to itself and to what it touches within the situation that makes up the state of dance. This year
in Chalon, it will be put to the test. The street is
the terrain of hip-hop in the so-called underprivileged neighbourhoods. À l’oeil libre by the TSN
group was imagined during composition workshops that took place within a detention centre for
adolescents. The translation on stage of their living
conditions, with the energy of slam and break
dance bears witness of their fraternity and offers a
symbolic liberation.
A narrow riser and a screen are enough for Osmosis Company to evoke the violence of the world.
The direct contact with the water, as done by
Nathalie Simon, has an intensity that is both different and twinned. With the same mechanism, and
using Chawki Amari’s short story, La Chose aux
Yeux Mouillés, Ali Salmi incarnates the poignant
As errant wanderers or
wild children, they run
breathlessly, sharing their
bags of grain with the
audience and running
straight up against an
impenetrable wall.
descent into death and the potential rebirth of the
kelb (the dog, the bastard), amidst the backdrop
of cities haunted by abject poverty and fundamentalism. Animality also informs Pedigree by the
Pernette Company. With a text by Jean-Bernard
Pouy, Histoire de Truffe, Laurent Falguiéras is up
against the asphalt in the coat of a homeless man.
He does not mime the dog, but is in the skin of
a dog through its sense of smell and its dependency. This truffle beast and customs animal will
also be killed. Between gravel, exposed beams and
ruins covered in tags, the members of Ad Libitum
(Antipodes Company) have found the location to
satisfy their dance of extremes in a former sugar
refinery. As errant wanderers or wild children, they
run breathlessly, sharing their bags of grain with
the audience and running straight up against an
impenetrable wall. Their ardour is proof of their
inner need. In this edition I have not seen projects
created in situ, broad choreographies that include
amateurs or incursions into everyday life. Is this
by choice, by chance or by constraint? I could not
say, nor does it matter. This is merely a collection of
impressions to feed the winter. ● SYLVIE CLIDIÈRE
The titles are quotes from Pedro Garcia, the Artistic Director of
Chalon dans la rue.
1. Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire, 24 July 2009.
2. Organised by Pascal Le Brun-Cordier, Director of the Masters
Degree in Cultural Projects in the Public Space at the University
of Paris I – Sorbonne, the publications of L’Entretemps and
HorsLesMurs. With the participation of Odile Azagury, Rachid
Kassi, Ali Salmi, Julie Desprairies, Laure Terrier, Anne le Batard,
Jean-Antoine Bigot, Denis Lafaurie and Pedro Garcia.
dancing
the space
Bodies under construction
A roundabout, a building “signed” public space… The whole city inspires choreographers.
Between the architecture and the bodies that inhabit it, the revelation is reciprocal.
T
he synergies that prefigure Bauhaus and the
solid relations that interweave between modern
dance and architecture at the beginning of the
20th century imagine the moving body as a special
marker of the city-dwelling universe. In the heart
of cities, dance interacts with other anthropological
and sociological practices. Between architects and
choreographers the thematic collaborations increase
in universities and schools.
Living Matter. If we think of architecture as “a
succession of sequences”1, and of the city as all the
movements that take place within it, then it is less
about denying the immobility of the developed site
than about paying particular attention to the bodies’
traceability. For Bodies in Urban Spaces (2004), Willi
Dorner uses young, malleable bodies that he then
leads into contortion. He develops his city route
with a squadron of dancers and town planning
and architecture students (Viva Cité in Sottevillelès-Rouen, Festival des 7 Collines in Saint-Etienne,
2009). In the course of a performance carried out
in charge step, a sculptural amalgamation pops up
which clusters together or dissolves in the crevices
of urban fabric. The living matter catches the eye
of the audience like many unresolved knots in a
mass of bodies. The principle of colour, which is
strong in Dorner’s work, recalls Sonia Delaunay’s
bright wheels of colour, capturing the movement of
crowds in Paris. In fact, Willi Dorner was inspired
by Körperkonfiguration in der Architekture (19721982), written by Valie Export, a Viennese feminist who used her body as a refractory component
in the bourgeois glaze of the Austrian capital. The
monument founds social dynamics that everyday
life conceals in forgetfulness. In search of a mediatory urban body, Laurent Pichaud (Cie X-Sud)
composes with busy spaces and, since Lande Part,
has let their subterranean corporality come to the
surface. In Référentiel Bondissant, a gymnasium piece,
he discovers the awkwardness of the prepubescent
body. Over-sized and dedicated to physical exploits,
the gymnasium incites a certain level of fear. The
choreographer puts a sense of reserve into the mix.
Mon Nom, une place pour les monuments aux morts, in
rehearsal, set up camp in public squares. In villages,
a morning stretches out, opening up to digression.
The performers create stimuli, intercepting trajectories, but never consuming the imagery of the monument to the fallen, “present even in chronic invisibility”. Preferring the discretion of quiet shadows,
they sketch their situations on the periphery. In the
first circle, that of the inhabitants, the public thing
emerges. And the first encounter A leur du nôtre will
take place at the Maison des Anciens Combattants
du Gard during the first days of the patrimony. Each
choreographer responds to the uniqueness of the site
with his or her own sensibilities. On Le Corbusier’s
Unité d’habitation in Firminy, Anne-Marie Pascoli
confronts the kinesphere of Laban2 and the unity of
Modulor2. In Villeurbanne in 2006, Julie Desprairies began with a global vision. Aside from deciphering the architectural gesture, Là Commence le Ciel
took on a societal motivation. The artist notably
drew from the styles of ensemble choreographies
of the Communist Party’s youth movements. The
more empirical Jean-Jacques Sanchez (Association
Laza), who is fascinated by the work of the architect
Oscar Niemeyer, explores the curves of the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Niteroi, Brazil. Wishing to
prolong this appropriation of space in France, he
hopes, with Corpos e Laços, to teach the universe of
Neiemeyer as a territory of exchange with painters, photographers and videographers. Trained in
Rue de la Dance, promenade choreographique
A few students from the
Dance Department at Paris 8
– Saint Denis mobilised some
local amateurs – and three
choreographers – for an in situ
creation. The public restitution
took place on 20 June; a stroll
through the ordinary life of
the city centre of Saint Denis
on a Saturday. In the pit of the
Chapelle des Trois-Patrons, the
proposal by Carmen Morais
appears as poetic archaeology.
On the Place de la Halle and
a high, glassed-in footbridge,
Silvia Siriczman’s group delivers
a light-hearted performance
with an acidic tone. As for
Laurent Pichaud, he offers an
open course of appearances
and disappearances, born from
the use of urban objects or
a sudden physicality that is
distorted in relation to that of
passers-by. It seems that the
research was heavily focused
on the appropriation of the
space and the viewpoint offered to spectators, immersive,
overhanging or from below.
● SYLVIE CLIDIÈRE
www.ruedeladanse.com
© FLORENT LANQUETIN
The Willi Dorner
Company, Bodies
in Urban Spaces,
Festival des
7 Collines,
Saint- Etienne,
2009.
contact improvisation, Jean-Jacques Sanchez also
attempts to disseminate dancers into the city during
his Corps-Enjeu(x) workshops.
Confronting flesh and building.
Patrice
Barthès, in residency at ENSAM (National School of
Architecture in Montpellier). After having conversed
with the work of Buren in Sérignan, in the Hérault
department, he is using Danse à Demeure to bring
together architecture students and geographers from
the neighbouring campus. The first workshops, Territoires en Mouvement led him to create choreography
in roundabouts and to confront bodies and ‘full’ locations (service stations, malls or apartment buildings)
chosen by the architecture students to prefigure their
projects. As per the request of the school’s administrative staff, he is offering dance classes twice a week,
as a way of putting the building ‘on the road’. He
also created a performance to inaugurate the library
with his students. The particularity of the Paris 8
Dance Department is in how it joins theory and practice. With the support of the Rencontres Choréographiques Internationales of Seine-Saint-Denis and
in the locations loaned out by the Regional Bureau
of Patrimony, Julie Perrin4 and two architects from
the architecture school at Paris-Malaquais – Philippe
Guérin and Xavier Fabre – led, along with their own
students, Le Corps à l’édifice (2005-2007), an immersive experience in a nursery, public garden or psychiatric hospital. Philippe Guérin informs the work as a
A sculptural amalgamation pops up
in the crevices of urban fabric,
unresolved knots in a mass of bodies.
painter and architect, while choreographers such as
Christophe Haleb, Prue Lang, Maria Donata D’Urso,
Gabriel Hernandez or Edmond Russo encourage his
tactile appropriation. It all comes together to bring
about unexpected gestures. It is in this way that one
of Julie Perrin’s seminars at University Paris 8 on the
spatiality of dance opened up with an in situ workshop, including a number of non-dancers, students
in cultural mediation or town planning, thus giving
life to the initiative Rue de la Danse (see box, p.16).
It doesn’t matter if it’s a tiny proposal or one that is
beyond the scales. Dancers occupied the city. They
are there to bear witness and to trace their route with
meaning. But caught in the threads of the urban
patchwork, they distort it every chance they get.
● ALIX DE MORANT
1. Philippe Prost, Penser un lieu pour la danse, in Repères, Cahier de
Danse no 18, Nov. 2006. 2. For Rudolf Laban (1879-1958), movement
is ‘living architecture’. Laban’s kinesphere defines the multidirectional
volume that surrounds the dancer and his or her movement.
3. Presented in April 1947 by Le Corbusier, the Modulor is a system
of measurements based on the proportions of the human body.
4. Julie Perrin, researcher at the Dance Department of University
Paris 8, ran Espaces de danse, Repères, Cahier de Danse no 18, Nov.
2006.
5. Jean-Jacques Sanchez, www.trans-sud-amerique.com/laza
“Coming into contact with
the elements, water, earth and mud”
Françoise Léger, Ilotopie.
Seen as a material, exposed, painted,
absorbed by the set or set free into
nature, the body is at the base of
Iltopie’s work. It is a central idea that
reveals the affinities between dance
and the street arts.
S
ince its creation in 1980, Ilotopie considers the street to be a democratic vehicle.
First oriented toward performance and the
“public arts”, then toward the theatre and dance,
the company constructed its own workspace in
1992 in Port-Saint-Louis in Camargue. As a place
of creation, Le Citron Jaune also hosts artists’ residencies, with dancers included. Since 1999, the
creation of the festival Les Envies Rhônements has
pursued this research and experimental work with
choreographers. Stradda met Françoise Léger, the
artistic co-director of Ilotopie, to try to answer
this question: What does dance bring to the street
arts?
© VINCENT MUTEAU
Stradda: What links have been forged between
contemporary dance and the street arts since the
1980’s and 90’s?
Francoise Léger: At first, it took some time for
dance to get out into the streets. I was able to
observe this from my small window in the street
theatre and with the two hats that I wear as both
a conceiver and programmer of shows. In dance,
the big boom took place in the beginning of the
80’s, shortly before street theatre. And although
things continued, for example, with the non-dance
movement, today we feel a bit out of steam. It
should be said that training programmes calibrate
not only artistic practices, but also conceptions
of shows. Take the Flemish dance movement, for
example, which continues to produce substantial
works. In Flanders, artistic training is multidisciplinary – visual arts, performance, dance and
theatre. This approach produces more complete
and pertinent artists. However, the link between
dance and the street arts is that we step out of
the discipline. This idea is reflected by the word
multidisciplinary. We open up to practices and to
sectors of society that are not traditionally consi-
dancing
the space
dered as being artistic or cultural. We proceed the public space, the body has yet to find its place. Ilotopie,
to a displacement and a movement beyond the It feels as though the body must again take its “Gens de
discipline.
place among the other species. There, we really couleur“, Furies,
work with the choreographers, like Ex Nihilo, Châlons-enFor you has this link been created through
whom we commissioned for the festival and who Champagne,
2009.
performance?
has already come up against the elements, water,
Yes. I had come from the performance world and earth, mud... With Satchie Noro, we mounted
Iltopie was still young, since I arrived in 1983. the mechanism Tridanse, to support innovative
After a period of “installations”, I thought that projects. Every year, we select a dance company
we wouldn’t stay on the sidewalk across the way, to be hosted in residency in three locations, the
just watching the reactions of passers-by! We had Citron Jaune, the Vélo Théâtre in Apt and the
to involve the body through its presence, perhaps 3bisF in Aix-en-Provence. But aside from a few
even more so than through its performance. One companies that have been at it since the beginof our first performances was called “La Vie en ning, many artists are caught between the street
Abribus”. We had made installations at bus stops and the stage. While the street is certainly a bit
with a kitchen and a bedroom and that created harsh, one can find milder locations in natural
a kind of distortion. Then it transformed into a spaces...
performance piece with a couple living there and
a more involved relationship with the passers by. When did dance appear in the residencies at the
From the point of view of a visual artist, we were Citron Jaune and Envies Rhônements?
From the beginning. One year, we even emphausing the body as material.
sized dance, as we thought that that was where
Does “People of colour”, which was created in 1989
the interesting things were happening. We hosted
and continues to tour, also use the body as material? Christophe Haleb, Ali Salmi, from Osmosis
Outside of all the symbols that this creation might Company, Yann Lheureux, Tango Sumo, Chrisrefer to and the dimension that it takes according tine Quoiraud or the Pernette Company, which
to the country it traverses, “Gens de couleur” is
based on the plasticity and architecture of the
body. This performance incites an incredible The link between dance and the street
feeling of freedom for the actors. Stripped of
their clothing and their identification, the body arts is (...) the word multidisciplinary.
again becomes a form of architecture, a microWe proceed to a displacement of and
cosm within the macrocosm of the social body.
What we are trying to say is that we are not naked, a movement beyond the discipline.
but clothed in colour. We have nonetheless had
difficulties, including some arrests in Australia. In
Anglo-Saxon countries, there is a real taboo of was invited this year to Envies Rhônements,
the body.
and which performed “Les Miniatures” and “Le
Dance is also present in shows like “La Salle de Passage” at the Citron Jaune in October. Next
remise en forme”, or “Eden sous-sol”... Many of year, we’ll be hosting a Belgian choreographer,
Ilopie’s actors have a background in dance and Satya, who is preparing something on water, and
one finds choreographic elements in most of our the Jeanne Simone Company, with “Mademoiperformances. But we are more into the idea of selle”.
going from the body to the set. For “Les Menus
Plaisirs”, we work on food and then the body So then what does dance bring to the street?
becomes a centre for proposals. We organised All of these choreographic adventures offer more
banquets where people eat in the actors’ bodies. of a feminine universe and sensibility in the public
It’s the devouring of the body, or even the absorp- space. So this year we’ll be more on the path of
tion of the body into the set with “La Femme women. Perhaps that’s another reason why dance
Papier-Peint”.
took some time to go out into the streets, because
street theatre is a bit macho... The presence of
the female body in the street is not always an
Do you find that your thoughts on space, the side
easy thing. We’ve had our fair share of salacious
step or the march, meet up with the political and
artistic preoccupations of many choreographers?
comments on the subject, but young generations
Yes, we find this question of the march in the are less likely to see things that way. Something
Envies Rhônements festival that takes place in a has gone out of style.
natural setting where, perhaps even more than in ● TEXT COMPILED BY FABIENNE ARVERS
dancing
the space
The outdoor adventure
© DOMINIQUE THIEULIN
So what is a dancer outdoors to do? He submits to the soundtrack of life, he breaks
through the audience and twirls within a moving set… He creates sparks of happiness.
I
s dance an all-terrain art? It’s hard to pretend that
it is. At first sight, it seems that nothing could be
less suitable for a dancer’s work than the outdoors.
The question of a dance floor alone seems enough
to do away with any vague notion of creation. And
yet… there are more and more choreographers
running into each other in gardens, parks, streets
and in the hollow parts of architecture… At the
risk of wearing big shoes in all senses of the term
– you don’t clap your heels the same way on grass
or tar as you would on a stage –, they transplant
their dance under different skies. It is up to them
to invent spectacular responses, suitable to original environments. Moving into this new terrain
represents a thrilling risk for them. Far from repelling choreographers, outdoor working conditions
are curiously becoming an exciting factor, even
an addiction. Changes in the weather, shifts in
the ambiances, an unplanned soundtrack, various
odours… Nothing is under control. Everything is
random and terribly alive.
Enjoyment. The black box, with its technical
perfection, seems out of this world in relation to
outdoor settings. “How enjoyable it is to dance
outdoors”, states the dancer, choreographer and
circus artist Satchie Noro. “Of course, when one
dances in a theatre, one is not confronted with the
difficulties of the outdoors. But I will never have
a soundtrack or a set like the ones I’ve been lucky
Satchie Noro,
Mémoire Clause,
Dedans-Dehors
festival,
Brétigny-surOrge, 2009.
“A puddle of water under my feet,
what a dream…”
Satchie Noro, Furnikaï Company
Agnès Pelletier,
from the
Volubilis
company, alias
Bénédicte
Pilchard,
Aurillac, 2007.
enough to have by chance in nature. On stage, the
message is too framed and I’m getting more and
more bored with it. There’s no way I’ll become a
functionary in the domain of dance or the theatre.
In a field, or in the street, one can actually be more
present. A puddle of water under my feet, what a
dream.” One does not choreograph in the same
way for the stage of a theatre or for a garden or
a piece of asphalt. The strength of certain shows
that are conceived for the outdoors resides precisely
within this particularity. Agnès Pelletier tells us that
“It’s difficult to hoist up what might be a specific
choreographic way of composing for the street. One
thing is certain with regard to my pieces. They are
not suitable for a conventional stage. The context
– for example, the steps for My System for ladies
Thanks to Transports
Exceptionnels, “the world
opened up to me […]. It’s
a gift that I would never
have dared to dream
about.”
Philippe Priasso, Beau Geste.
and gentlemen aussi – where the story itself sets out
parameters that rule out performing in theatres. The
scenario is what brings out the dance in my shows.”
The unique identity of the street dancer begins with
his or her relationship with the spectators. Addressing the audience directly is at the heart of outdoor
performances. It is difficult, even impossible unless
one simply wants to avoid the subject, to not see
the audience, to sense it, to hear it… Eye to eye (or
almost), shoulder to shoulder, or even stepping on
its feet, it is the partner of choice. The audience is
volatile, but harshly present, to the point of accosting
the dancer after the performance without giving it a
second thought. Since he began dancing Transports
Exceptionnels, a pas de deux with a steam shovel,
created by Dominique Boivin in 2004, Philippe
Priasso is still in shock. “I have never lived through
such strong emotions with people”, he tells us. “The
world, in the broad sense of the term, opened up to
me thanks to this show. It opens another perspective
on dance and allows me to reach out to very different people. It’s a gift that I would never have dared
to dream about”.
© VINCENT MUTEAU
Outdoors by chance. The fragility of outdoor
dance calls for a certain kind of conditioning for
the dancer. Flexibility, adaptability, a heightened
sense of risk and of the accidental… Oddly enough,
many dancers that today work in the street come
from a relatively classical background. Priasso is a
dancer “formatted by the black box”, as he himself
says. He went through the Centre National de
Dance Contemporaine in Anger in the late 70s,
and then founded the Beau Gest company with
Dominique Boivin and Christine Erbé in 1981.
In contrast, the background of Satchie Noro, an
expert in classical ballet, is rooted in the terrain
of performance in Berlin, then in Amsterdam and
New York in the early 1990’s. “I was seventeen and
I found myself in the street with a group of people”,
she tells us. “Anything was possible, we would find
a spot and present a performance, and then we’d go
set ourselves up elsewhere. It was hard core, as they
say, but also very creative and exciting.” After ➜
dancing
the space
Patrick de Valette
in L’Autre Défilé,
by Philippe Decouflé,
La Villette, Paris, 2006.
Rock Stars. Economically speaking, the sector
is nothing like the theatre. While the paydays are
slimmer, they are generally more numerous. In
a difficult context, dancing outdoors represents
a sizeable resource. “The immense enjoyment of
mesmerizing 3,000 people, as I’ve had the opportunity to do, is an unimaginable gift”, Philippe
Priasso tells us. “Dancing outdoors is an extraordinary experience, but the result is also disproportionate. You’re really received like a rock star.” Since
its creation, Transports Exceptionnels has had a level
of success that is as exceptional as its title, with
nearly four hundred performances throughout the
entire world, From São Paolo to Tokyo. Priasso
then blurts out, “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to go
back to the stage.” ● ROSITA BOISSEAU
Extérieur
essai sur la danse
dans lʼespace public
Danse
Extérieur Danse,
an essay on dance
in the public space
Sylvie Clidière and Alix de Morant
Copublication by HorsLesMurs/
L’Entretemps, “Carnets de rue”
collection, 192 p., 29 €.
S
olo performance,
urban festival, in situ
creation… The forms of
outdoor dance are among
the most diverse. In this
book-DVD, the authors bring the reader as close as
possible to the dancer’s experience. The creations
are interpreted and the references are carefully
chosen. Richly illustrated, “Extérieur Danse” supports
the diversity of dance pathways laid out beyond the
conventional stages and in a reinvented proximity with
the audience.
eur
ExtériDanse
danse
sur la
public
essai
lʼespace
dans
DVD inclus
Sylvie Clidière
Alix de Morant
DVD Extérieur Danse, Images de la création hors les murs
collection HorsLesMurs, october 2009. Publication in french language.
© LAURENT PAILLIER / PHOTOSDEDANSE.COM
➜ collaborating with the contemporary choreographer Alain Rigout, among others, Satchie Noro
converted herself in 2002 to the circus arts (trapeze
and wire) before going back to working outdoors.
As Agnès Pelletier spontaneously declared, “dancing outdoors is a matter of chance… And, as we
all know in life, nothing really every happens by
chance.” Her training started with athletics, then
contemporary dance at 18 years of age in a school
in London that applies the Martha Graham technique. Her career began under the auspices of an
English collective. Later on in Bordeaux she would
earn her state diploma as a dance instructor before
founding her own company, Volubilis, which has
successfully focused on the street since 2004. My
System…, a choreographic spiel for one actor and
two dancers, has been touring for four years.
Grand Master Decouflé
Philippe Decouflé has a truly unique status. He is one of the rare
choreographers and directors, perhaps the only one today in France,
who does not only play with labels, but is also able to do what he
wishes without having to answer to anyone. So there’s no surprise
in seeing him creating a parade for amateurs in Seine-Saint-Denis
in September, 2008 and then setting up at the National Theatre
of Chaillot with his company for Sombreros before leaving for a
turn around the ring with the Crazy Horse girls. Inside, outside, in
the street, at the cabaret, under the big top (soon with the Cirque
du Soleil) and always on stage, Decouflé glides from one space to
another with remarkable grace. Surely his historical performance at
the opening of the winter Olympics in Savoie in 1992 allowed him
to develop the scholarly freedom that he now enjoys with delighted
abandon. Overlapping such disparate registers as burlesque for erotic
shows, or fashion for L’Autre Défilé, with costumes from the Opéra
de Paris and the Comédie Française and presented at the park of La
Villette (2006), seems to come naturally for this man who has worked
as a mime, a circus artist and a dancer. In collaborating with dancers,
video directors, circus artists and amateurs, Decouflé shows us that
he knows how to adapt anew to a given space. Whether it is free or
not, referential or simply playful, it is, first and foremost, the work of
Decouflé that we enjoy. What could be better! ● R.B.
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This projectfrom
has been funded
with support
the European
Commission.
This publication
dossier
strad
dafrom
#14
/ page
18
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held
responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
circostrada network

dancing the space - Centre National du Théâtre

Transcription

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