A film that says about Bernice Coppieters Ballets de Monte-Carlo's Principal Dancer.

Source : Ballets de Monte Carlo 

En savoir plus : http://www.balletsdemontecarlo.com/  

Belgian, born in Dendermonde, Belgium on 16th November 1970

TRAINING

1980 Bernice Coppieters studied dance at the Antwerp Institute of Ballet

1988 She joined the Juilliard School of New York winning the Prix de Lausanne in the same year.

THE CHOREOGRAPHER

1988 She entered the Royal Ballet of Flanders where she was made soloist. From this period, she has particularly fond memories of her performance of the Tchaikovsky/Pas de deux by Balanchine.

1991-2014 She joined the Ballets de Monte-Carlo directed by Jean-Christophe Maillot. The meeting between the two artists marked the start of an exceptional partnership that has lasted for over 20 years. Bernice Coppieters has inspired Jean-Christophe Maillot to create his most memorable characters in ballets that have built the company’s reputation all over the world: Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (she has also played Lady Capulet) / the Fairy Godmother and Wicked Stepmother Cinderella/ Meier in the "Drosselmeier" couple in Casse-Noisette Circus / Beauty in La Belle / Titania in Le Songe / Death in Faust / Princess Scheherazade in Scheherazade / The mother of the Black Swan in LAC.

She has also performed major roles in the ballets Concert d’Anges, Dov’è la Luna, Duo d’Anges, Home, Sweet Home, Thème et Quatre Variations, Ubuhuha, Vers un Pays Sage, In Volo, l’île, Opus 40, Œil pour Œil, Entrelacs, D’une Rive à l’Autre, Atro Canto I et II Fauves (with Gil Roman), Men’s Dance for Women, Daphnis et Chloé, Choré, Casse-Noisette Compagnie, Switch (with Diana Vishneva). 

Bernice Coppieters has also danced the lead roles in the repertoire of the Ballets Russes, created in the Principality of Monaco 100 years ago (Scheherazade, Les Sylphides, The Firebird, Petrouchka, L’Après-midi d’un Faune) as well as the repertoire of George Balanchine (Agon, The Four Temperaments, The Prodigal Son, La Valse, Serenade, Violin Concerto, Who Cares ?, Theme and Variations).

She has also worked with many modern choreographers whose pieces have become part of the repertoire of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, or who, as guest choreographers, have created roles for her: Duende by Nacho Duato, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, Approximate Sonata, The Vile Parody of Address and The Second Detail by William Forsythe, Watching Waters by Renato Zanella, Return to a Strange land, Bella Figura, Sechs Tänze, No more play and Silent cries by Jiri Kylian, and pieces by Karole Armitage, Lucinda Childs (The Chairman Dances), Twyla Tharp, Kevin O’Day, Angelin Preljocaj, Uwe Sholz, Jacopo Godani, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (In Memoriam, Mea Culpa), Johan Inger, Alonzo King, Marco Goecke (solo created for her: Tué), and Maurice Béjart who gave her the honour of dancing his Boléro.

In recent years, she has worked for Jean-Christophe Maillot on several of his major productions for large companies such as the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Essen Ballet, the Vienna State Opera Ballet, the Korea National Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the National Theatre of Prague, the Atlanta Ballet Company.

ARTISTIC COLLABORATIONS

Ernest Pignon-Ernest
Bernice Coppieters has worked in partnership with the artist for the last 12 years. In the 2000s, he told her about his desire to create a project around 7 mystical women. The dancer would become his model for a decade. In July 2008, the artist took over the Chapel of Saint Charles d’Avignon (then the Grimaldi Forum the following year) to exhibit the results of this collaboration. The exhibition was the subject of a book, Extases, Gallimard, 2008.

Helmut Newton
Bernice Coppieters has worked with the photographer on many occasions. She appears in the famous SUMO album published by Taschen.

Ange Leccia
In 2006, the visual artist created Bernice, a film which set out a portrait of the dancer and would be broadcast on many channels.

AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS

1988 Prix de Lausanne 

1995 Appointed Danseuse Etoile of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo by H.R.H. the Princess of Hanover 2002 Awarded the Officier de l’Ordre du Mérite Culturel of the Principality of Monaco

2003 Received the Positano "Léonide Massine" prize 

2005 Voted "Star of the Year" by the Jury of the Danza & Danza Prize presided over by Mario Pasi 2011 Awarded the Benois de la Danse 2011 by Yuri Grigorovitch.

Update April 2015

Since the 1980s, Ange Leccia has simultaneously reflected on objects and worked on moving images, which refer to a “non-definitive state of things, a practice of re-using pre-existing materials intended to take on other meanings” (Giorgio Verzotti). He thus draws our attention to the violence and power of certain contemporary objects derived from the technological industry by confronting cars or motorbikes, television sets or projectors… The face to face arrangement of identical objects, often linked by light, erases their functionality in favour of a reflection on their meaning and how they reflect the society that uses them. Alongside this, Ange Leccia uses videos, not in a narrative context as in a cinematographic film, but rather by looping images over and over again, thus allowing spectators to grasp the work instantly or to perceive it over time in a contemplative manner.  But we have here the contemplation of an image-movement. The cinema that, moreover, continues to be a source of inspiration, forms the very fabric of a part of his work, in which he singles out and runs again and again, without interruption, an extraordinary sequence in the history of cinema, such as an explosion taken from Pierrot le fou by Jean-Luc Godard in 1986. Whether through serenity or the violence of images, Ange Leccia questions the spectator on their meaning.

Through part of his video work, Ange Leccia explores the elements. In the 1990s, he produced works based on the repetition of natural phenomena: with La Mer (1991), he films the flow and ebb of waves on the shores of Corsica. During a stay in the island of La Reunion, he showed interest in the smoke Fumées (1995) escaping from the chimney stack of a sugar refinery. The backwash of the sea, just like the movement of smoke, creates a highly pictorial effect that we find again in Orage. The lightning flashes lit up against the dark background continues the tradition of landscape painting. The study of luminosity and the effect produced by contrasts recall the works of Le Lorrain or Joseph Vernet. However, this work is also shifting and acoustic: the spectators find themselves in a space within which they perceive the storm in its visual and auditory displays. The different parts of the screen light up in turn according to the play of the climatic elements. The luminous flickering of the lightning flashes streaking across the sky and illuminating the black clouds, the deep rumble of thunder and the crackling of pouring rain conjure up a real flood: the landscape is nothing more than light.  The visitor is at the very heart of the work, shifting in the face of this moving image. The arrangement thus places the spectator in a visual and acoustic environment, restoring in him/her the sensations of climatic outburst, the fascination for the beauty of the spectacle of nature, and the associated childhood fears. 

Sans titre of 1985 reveals another essential aspect of Ange Leccia’s work, the questioning of the objects in our society: pieces of broken blocks reveal the “snow” of a television screen in the centre of a concrete cube.  The artist uses the element of a technological universe charged with transmitting images and information. Unlike the target objective, not only the screen, mis en abîme, is mostly concealed as at the bottom of a well, but the light given off from it expresses only the emptiness and vacuity of information, and even its illusion. Here, emptiness is associated with violence both in the choice of materials that make us think of war and destruction, and in the unpleasantness of the noise. The dazzling and crackling effects conjured up by this arrangement call the spectator to question the role of the image and the media in our information society.

Source : V. D.-L., Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne