An extract remodelled by L’Atelier chorégraphique (Deuil-la-Barre), artistic manager Christine Léger, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2016) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Set up in 2009, in Deuil-la-Barre in Île-de-France, coordinated by Christine Léger, this group of eight female dancers with a contemporary dance background and an average age of around 50, is curious about all choreographic worlds. It has discovered and plunged into the writing of Alban Richard, the Ben Aïm brothers, and Christian Bourigault. Wishing to develop work based on listening, togetherness, and knowledge-sharing, it gives stage performances several times a year.

The project
Philippe Decouflé’s Decodex (1985) unfurls a wondrous world of fabulous creatures and quirky appearances out of all proportion to the limitless imagination of the choreographer. Exploring strangeness and humour and passing through the strata of this immensely successful show are some of the aims of the group, that is set to collaborate with the dancers Éric Martin and Alexandra Naudet, key interpreters of the company DCA. 

The choreographer
A key personality of contemporary dance since the early 1980s and the standard bearer of a certain idea of what is popular and erudite in art, Philippe Decouflé, who spent time in the early 1980s in the CNDC d’Angers directed by the American multimedia master Alwin Nikolais, blends dance, video, text, lighting and optical effects in joyfully phantasmagorical shows. At the head of his own company, DCA, since 1983, based at the Chaufferie in Saint-Denis (93), he maintains the high pressure of a handcrafted and erudite choreographic gesture, the result of an adventurous and independent spirit. 

Dancer, choreographer, director and art director

As a child, I dreamt of becoming a comic book artist. Drawing is usually the start of my creative process. I just throw out ideas and sketch out pictures that pass through my head. My culture is comics, musicals, nightclub dancing, and also Oskar Schlemmer, the Bauhaus choreographer. Discovering photos of characters from his Triadisches Ballett was a revelation for me. I had always wanted to work with simple geometric shapes like cubes and triangles. I liked seeing how these lines and volumes behaved with each other. Alwin Nikolaïs taught me the importance of light and costume, and the confidence you need to mix everything together. Technically, it was Merce Cunningham who taught me the most about dance. I was taking video courses he was giving in New York. It was fascinating. That’s where I learned how to solve problems of distance and geometry, and the basic principles of optics and movement. Tex Avery inspired me a lot in thinking up gestures that are almost impossible to do. I’ve always kept something of that desire to create something strange, extreme or crazy in my movements. I’m looking for a dance style that’s off-balance, always on the verge of toppling over. With influences like the Marx Brothers, for example, and in particular Groucho Marx, I’ve developed a taste for naughty risk-taking, and comic repetition of mistakes.

Source : Philippe Découflé

More information : cie-dca.com

From live stage images to life in images, the  director and video artist Karim Zeriahen seems to have found the  shortest way. Since the beginning of the 90s, when he worked in close  relationship with choreographer Philippe Decouflé, he learned how to put  the art of stage in motion, contemporary dance most of the time. Karim  Zeriahen then starts a fruitful collaboration with Montpellier based  choreographer Mathilde Monnier. Stop, Videlilah, day of night, short  films adapted from her stage creations. Each time, Karim Zeriahen's   camera takes over the place with movement, the body language is not  frozen but magnified. Choreographer Herman Diephuis also joins this  gallery of dancing portraits. Documentaries on figures such like Albert  Maysles or Hubert de Givenchy and from Joe Dalessandro to Paul  Morrissey, he sets a signature, a camera always in action with  confidence.

Today the director goes further with a new  project and tracks the subtle movements of the body language beyond the  physical appearance. A collection of living portraits as unique pièces  reminding us of the master portraitists of renaissance. These living  natures consists in filming the subject in a certain amount of time,  almost still, with signs of respiration, eye blinks, as if it were  posing for a painting. They are then displayed on a flat screen with a  memory card. With this collection starting, Karim Zeriahen, with his  documentary and artist vision, interrogates himself about the virtual  world filled with images. By taking a pause, and his models with him, he  questions the way we look at things, the way we look at life.

Source: Philippe Noisette 

En savoir plus: www.karimzeriahen.com

Amateur Dance and Repertory is a companion program to amateur practice beyond the dance class and the technical learning phase. Intended for groups of amateur dancers, it opens a space of sharing for those who wish to deepen a practice and a knowledge of the dance in relation to its history.

Laurent Barré
Head of Research and Choreographic Directories
Anne-Christine Waibel
Research Assistant and Choreographic Directories
+33 (0)1 41 83 43 96
danse-amateur-repertoire@cnd.fr

Source: CN D

More information: https://www.cnd.fr/en/page/323-danse-en-amateur-et-repertoire-grant-programme