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dossier from stradda #14 / page 2
contents / editorial
6 7 8 10 10 12 14 16 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 chorgraphique Coming into contact with the elements, water, earth and mud, interview ith Franoise Lger, Ilotopie The outdoor adventure Grand Master Decou
DANCING THE SPACE
dossier from stradda #14 / page 1
strad da
dossier #6 - february 2010
DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATION Jean Digne CHIEF EDITORS Jean Digne Stphane Simonin REDACTION Fabienne Arvers, Rosita Boisseau, Sylvie Clidire, Frdric 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
editorial
e are pleased to present you with Stradda magazines 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-
pondents of the Circostrada Network platform naturally turned to this particularly well-identied 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 Stphane 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] reects 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 Mricourt 75011 Paris France T. +33 (0)1 55 28 10 10 F. +33 (0)1 55 28 10 11 info@circostrada.org
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dossier
Fall in Love, a series of photos by Petr Lovigin for two dancers in love (2005-2008).
DOSSIER COORDINATED
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 Rancire, Le Spectateur mancip, La Fabrique, 2008.
BY ALIX DE MORANT
PETR LOVIGIN
The Sigma Project Quartet at the inauguration of the Evocation of the image of the woman exhibit, at the Joan-Mir Museum, Palma de Mallorca, December 2008.
Alix de Morant. A dancer and graduate of the International School of Jacques Lecoq, since the 1990s 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 scne (1998, Lge dhomme) and But(s). She also runs the Reading and Writing Contemporary Dance workshop at the University of Lyon II.
Arts du Cirque (CNAC) that use choreographers in their educational programmes have contributed to the hybridisation of training. It is not surprising to nd in the last summer season of the Transforme programme, (led by Myriam Gournk at Royaumont4), a Swiss performer, an Indian dancer, two circus artists (including the trapeze artist Clmence 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, Yaound or Cairo. His black and white company YK now performs Ewa Bamijo (Come Dance With Me) in Lagos, an event that occurs every other year and brings together performers from all over Africa. 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.
Oscillations.
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 inuences. And schools such as the Centre National des
Vibrations.
halon, July 2009. Scattered memories came to me as soon as I got o 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 artice, it reveals and opens the imagination up to the material and human environment. This year, the festival honours dance. Its director, Pedro Garcia, arms 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 ve invited companies in the in section are representative of choreography today, which includes hip-hop and acrobatic dance
and voluntarily uses images. The o 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.
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 Gnrik Vapeur,
JEAN-LUC PETIT
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 True, Laurent Falguiras 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 true 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 renery. 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 CLIDIRE
The titles are quotes from Pedro Garcia, the Artistic Director of Chalon dans la rue. 1. Le Journal de Sane-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 LEntretemps 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. dossier from stradda #14 / page 9
Sylvie Clidire. Trained through her travels and studies, she has alternated between cultural activism, theatrical collaboration and teaching, notably with the Ecole Nationale Suprieure 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.
The dancers 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. loeil libre by the TSN
he synergies that pregure 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 sequences1, 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 Cit in Sottevillels-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 Dorners work, recalls Sonia Delaunays bright wheels of colour, capturing the movement of crowds in Paris. In fact, Willi Dorner was inspired by Krperkonguration 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 Rfrentiel 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 rst circle, that of the inhabitants, the public thing emerges. And the rst encounter A leur du ntre will take place at the Maison des Anciens Combattants du Gard during the rst days of the patrimony. Each choreographer responds to the uniqueness of the site with his or her own sensibilities. On Le Corbusiers Unit dhabitation 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, L Commence le Ciel took on a societal motivation. The artist notably drew from the styles of ensemble choreographies of the Communist Partys 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 Laos, to teach the universe of Neiemeyer as a territory of exchange with painters, photographers and videographers. Trained in
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 Siriczmans 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 CLIDIRE www.ruedeladanse.com
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. Patrice Barths, in residency at ENSAM (National School of Architecture in Montpellier). After having conversed with the work of Buren in Srignan, in the Hrault department, he is using Danse Demeure to bring together architecture students and geographers from the neighbouring campus. The rst 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 pregure their projects. As per the request of the schools administrative sta, he is oering 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 Chorographiques 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 Gurin and Xavier Fabre led, along with their own students, Le Corps ldice (2005-2007), an immersive experience in a nursery, public garden or psychiatric hospital. Philippe Gurin 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 DUrso, 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 Perrins 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 doesnt matter if its 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 Repres, Cahier de Danse no 18, Nov. 2006. 2. For Rudolf Laban (1879-1958), movement is living architecture. Labans kinesphere denes 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, Repres, Cahier de Danse no 18, Nov. 2006. 5. Jean-Jacques Sanchez, www.trans-sud-amerique.com/laza dossier from stradda #14 / page 11
FLORENT LANQUETIN
Coming into contact with the elements, water, earth and mud
Franoise Lger, Ilotopie.
Seen as a material, exposed, painted, absorbed by the set or set free into nature, the body is at the base of Iltopies work. It is a central idea that reveals the afnities between dance and the street arts.
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 Rhnements has pursued this research and experimental work with choreographers. Stradda met Franoise Lger, the artistic co-director of Ilotopie, to try to answer this question: What does dance bring to the street arts?
Stradda: What links have been forged between contemporary dance and the street arts since the 1980s and 90s?
Francoise Lger: At rst, 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 80s, 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 reected by the word multidisciplinary. We open up to practices and to sectors of society that are not traditionally consi-
VINCENT MUTEAU
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.
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 diculties of the outdoors. But I will never have a soundtrack or a set like the ones Ive been lucky
Agns Pelletier, from the Volubilis company, alias Bndicte Pilchard, Aurillac, 2007.
enough to have by chance in nature. On stage, the message is too framed and Im getting more and more bored with it. Theres no way Ill become a functionary in the domain of dance or the theatre. In a eld, 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. Agns Pelletier tells us that Its dicult to hoist up what might be a specic 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 []. Its 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 dicult, 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 dierent people. Its a gift that I would never have dared to dream about. 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 Erb 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 1990s. I was seventeen and I found myself in the street with a group of people, she tells us. Anything was possible, we would nd a spot and present a performance, and then wed go set ourselves up elsewhere. It was hard core, as they say, but also very creative and exciting. After
dossier from stradda #14 / page 15
VINCENT MUTEAU
Rock Stars. Economically speaking, the sector is nothing like the theatre. While the paydays are slimmer, they are generally more numerous. In a dicult context, dancing outdoors represents a sizeable resource. The immense enjoyment of mesmerizing 3,000 people, as Ive 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. Youre 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 So Paolo to Tokyo. Priasso then blurts out, Im not sure Ill ever be able to go back to the stage. ROSITA BOISSEAU
Extrieur
essai sur la danse dans lespace public
Danse
Extrieur Danse,
Sylvie Clidire and Alix de Morant Copublication by HorsLesMurs/ LEntretemps, Carnets de rue collection, 192 p., 29 .
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 dancers experience. The creations are interpreted and the references are carefully chosen. Richly illustrated, Extrieur Danse supports the diversity of dance pathways laid out beyond the conventional stages and in a reinvented proximity with the audience.
eur Extri Danse
danse sur la public essai lespace dans
DVD inclus
DVD Extrieur Danse, Images de la cration hors les murs collection HorsLesMurs, october 2009. Publication in french language.
dossier from stradda #14 / page 16
This projectfrom has been funded with support the European Commission. This publication dossier strad dafrom #14 / page 18 [communication] reects 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.
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