Children

Of this world, or the other
Singing musical rounds
With absurd and lyrical words
Which no doubt are what is left
Of the oldest poetic monuments
Of humanity

Apollinaire

"I placed my metaphorical camera obscura in front of this stanza of Apollinaire’s Alcools --- and I heard cries, laughter, jingles, glimpsed little games, circles, rounds, people in lines, bridges, drawings (designs?) – archaic, simple, sometimes old-fashioned. I also saw some implausible versatilities, abusive outbursts, old-style tramplings, inopportune journeys.

In front of them, behind and underneath them, the shadows of these dances merge with them. As if a landslide or a weighty inversion had somehow distorted the perspective on these movements and their representations.

Facing us are legends, myths, stories, rites, consecrations, chronicles, conjectures, sagas and intrigues – all rising up from under the feet of the dancers, climbing up to our linked arms.

I cannot help thinking that I am dealing with archaeologists who have lost their memories, but not their movement.

These archaeologists are creating joyful archives, never stabilised, such that each will play a singular and continual role in building the community to which he or she belongs."

In this work, I am working with a simple form, the round – to retrace steps found at parties, consecrations, wedding dances, warrior dances, processions, stamping of feet, unisons, time-lags, interlockings, leg action from musical comedy. The round collapses, flattens out, staggers itself, turns itself into a bas relief, a frieze, a whirlpool, a carousel, a tourniquet, a conga line, hugs the wall. In this multiple form where community is first, singularity keeps coming up, “one” always appearing in its striking dialogical and dynamic relationship to the others, sometimes initiating, sometimes being led. A kind of giant, mobile camera obscura creates more shadowed moments, revealing what I feel may be the “dark side” of the round, the inside of the machinery, the underside of the dancing.
The machine is both a lighting source and a screen on which shadows will be projected, multiplying the silhouettes of the dancers present onstage. Shadows and images will have their own choreography.

Persephassa, a piece for six percussionists by Iannis Xenakis – is already a rather special partner to this dance because of its power and its polyrhythm. I feel that its construction in masses and blocks is in fact actualised both visually and choreographically.
Its spatial sound architecture with its disseminations and transformations of the “round” form creates multiple call-and-answer phrases which are mutally supportive and honeycomb together.
Ideally for me what happens is that you begin wondering if you’re looking at music -- or listening to dance.
This project includes some new data in terms of the transformation of my work: it is the first time I am choreographing for ten dancers, and the way I am thinking of the alliance with the music is also another step, as well as how I will be utilising image.

Born in 1963, Emmanuelle Huynh studied both philosophy and dance. Having performed with Nathalie Collantes, Hervé Robbe, Odile Duboc, Catherine Contour and the Quatuor Knust, in 1994 she was awarded a prestigious Villa Médicis hors-les-murs grant to go to Vietnam, and upon her return she created her first piece, a solo, Múa, with the lighting designer Yves Godin and the composer Kasper T. Toeplitz. The creation of Múa was the first step in her ongoing creative collaborations with artists from different fields.

She continued her choreographic work with projects in which she encountered practicians from many different disciplines: the astrophysicist Thierry Foglizzo explaining his research on black holes onstage with six dancers in Distribution en cours (Casting to be announced) in 2000, as well as many plasticians: Erik Dietman for the performance piece Le modèle modèle, modèle; Frédéric Lormeau for Vasque fontaine/partition Nord; Fabien Lerat for Visite guidée/vos questions sont des actes; Nicolas Floc’h for Bord, tentative pour corps, textes et tables in 2001; Numéro in2002; La Feuille in 2005; Jocelyn Cottencin for Cribles in 2009.

She created several pieces based on literary works: Bord, tentative pour corps, textes et tables, a choreographic project based on texts by Christophe Tarkos, and A Vida Enorme/épisode 1, a duo based on texts by the Portuguese poet Herberto Helder (2003).

Emmanuelle Huynh creates choreographic vocabulary which is constantly changing, specific to each project. In Heroes (2005). a piece for seven dancers and a musician, she placed onstage heroic figures from our childhood; Le Grand Dehors (The Great Outdoors), a tale for today, created in 2007, is related to the “lost dances,” those phrases we give up, leave behind in the choreographic creative process, which evoke a certain state of affairs, of the time.

In 2009, Emmanuelle Huynh began an atypical collaboration with the ikebana master Seiho Okudaira in Shinbaï, le vol de l’âme (Shinbai, the stolen soul), in which ikebana – the Japanese art of flower arranging –  and dance respond to each other, resulting in the creation and performance of a rikka (bouquet).

Her interest in Japan and Japanese artists had already brought her to choreograph the duo Futago (twin in Japanese) in 1998, under the auspices of The Monster Project, a dialogue of choreographic language created in Kyoto with the Japanese choreographer Kosei Sakamoto, based on the theme of the monster. Spiel, a duo with the Japanese performance artist Akira Kasai, was the first stage of work at the Festival Extra in Bonlieu in April 2011, then at the Morishita Studio in Tokyo.

In 2009, the creation of her piece Cribles at the Festival Montpellier Danse introduced a new relationship with music in the choreographer’s creative process: the score of the piece Persephassa (1969) by Iannis Xenakis became the principal protagonist of the work, with its 11 dancers. The version of the work called Cribles/live in 2010, with the musicians of the Percussions Rhizome, brought an even deeper appreciation of this relationship between the dancers and the musicians sharing the same space: the musicians were spaced around and outside the audience, according to Xenakis’ instructions.

Emmanuelle Huynh has developed over the past fifteen years her pedagogical work, targeting arts schools and training programmes for dancers, in the form of workshops and teaching at these schools, among others the ex.e.r.ce programme at the Centre Chorégraphique National of Montpellier. She has organised several work sessions involving artists from different fields: Hourvari, laboratoire instantané at the Centre Pompidou in 2001, Edelweiss at the CCN of Montpellier in 2003, and Ligne d’arrivée during a residency of her company at the Domaine départemental of Chamarande in 2004. As a collaborator for the magazine Nouvelles de Danse, she organised a series of interviews over many years with the American choreographer Trisha Brown, published in 2012 by the Editions Les Presses du réel, Trisha Brown/ Emmanuelle Huynh.

Emmanuelle Huynh also does performance work in museums. In July of 2004, she was the Artistic Director of the Festival Istanbul Danse, a cooperative project between Turkish and French artists involving touring, pedagogy and arts discussions. She rewrote the pedagogic plan for the École supérieure of the CNDC in Angers when she was appointed its director in 2004, where she also created the Essais training programme, now a master’s degree programme in dance, creation and performance, in partnership with the Université Paris 8 Saint-Denis and the Beaux- Arts School of Angers (Esba-talm). She mentored emerging artists, notably in the Schools Festival, a bi-annual international conference for dance schools.

From 2004 to 2012 Emmanuelle Huynh was the Director of the Centre national de danse contemporaine in Angers (CNDC), where she implemented her project for this national choreographic center which is also an institution of higher learning focused exclusively on contemporary dance. The two programs of the school were offered to young choreographic artists, performers (the FAC program) as well as young creators (the Essais program). The artistic mission of the CNDC consisted then of five different axes: creation, artists residencies, programming the dance season at the Quai, a forum for performing arts in Angers, the École supérieure of contemporary dance, and educational, community and audience outreach.

In 2013, Emmanuelle Huynh reactivated her Compagnie Mùa, continuing her creation and pedagogical work as well as international and transdisciplinary projects.

In October 2014 she created TÔZAI!... piece for 6 performers (whose her) at Théâtre Garonne in Toulouse.

At the same time, based on an invitation from the French Embassy in New York, Emmanuelle Huynh began a two year project, New-York(s), with Jocelyn Cottencin, consisting of film portraits and performance pieces which will create a portrait of the city of New York through its architecture, its spaces and its residents. The installation will be created at the Passerelle Centre d’Art in Brest in February 2016 and the performance which will launch the installation will be during the Festival Danzfabrik/ Le Quartz in March 2016.

Part of the preparation of New York(s) is a long term collaboration with the Japanese choreographer Eiko Otake, who emigrated to the USA 40 years ago – whom Emmanuelle met in 2013. This collaboration includes several public presentations (Brussels in May 2015, New York in June 2015 and February 2016, Berkeley in April 2016…).

Emmanuelle Huynh is also preparing a creation based on Formation, the autobiographical book by Pierre Guyotat.

Since 2014, she has been an associate assistant Master at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture in Nantes.

Source : website of the company Múa : http://emmanuellehuynh.fr/index.php/fr/biographies

The National Center for Contemporary Dance - CNDC - was created in 1978 at the initiative of the Ministry of Culture and the City of Angers. It followed the B.T.C. Ballet contemporary theater directed by Françoise Adret and Jacques-Albert Cartier, transferred to Nancy. Designed as a school of choreographers and the headquarters of a permanent company, it is run by Alwin Nikolais for three years.

When Viola Farber succeeded him in 1981, the school specialized in the training of dancers. Viola Farber forms a new company and inaugurates a teacher training program.

In April 1984, the management of the CNDC was entrusted to Michel Reilhac. The center still trains dancers and teachers. It no longer has a permanent company but serves as a production platform through residences. Large companies of international renown (in residence for two to three months) and younger companies (in the context of the "Summer Quarters") are then present. This is how Merce Cunningham and his company inaugurate the large Bodinier studio and that successive personalities such as Régine Chopinot, Maguy Marin, Odile Duboc, Dominique Bagouet, Mathilde Monnier and Jean-François Duroure, Edward Lock, Hervé Robbe, Philippe Decouflé, Catherine Diverrès and Bernardo Montet, Daniel Larrieu, Trisha Brown, Wim Vandekeybus ...

In April 1988 the new director, Nadia Croquet, continues to develop a policy to support creation, with a more specific openness to Europe. In January 1993, Joëlle Bouvier and Régis Obadia were named artistic directors of the CNDC, then labeled CNDC l'Esquisse.

The CNDC, which became a national choreographic center (CCN) in the 1990s, reinforces its mission as a choreographic center through the production of shows and its role as artistic advisor while continuing the training. At the same time, from 1986 to 2006, he worked with the New Theater of Angers, a national drama center, to offer a program of choreographic performances, thus increasing the audience and the readability of the dance to the public by multiplying the glances on the creation contemporary.

In February 2004, the CNDC is under the direction of the choreographer Emmanuelle Huynh, it intends to perpetuate the tradition of experimental contemporary dance and offer a school in connection with the dynamics of contemporary creation. From 2011, the CNDC School has two major courses, one leads to the National Diploma of Professional Dancer (DNSPD) and the license, the second prepares for a master.

Robert Swinston, who was appointed artistic director of the CNDC in 2012 by the Board of Directors, takes office in January 2013. Create and encourage creativity, develop the legacy of Merce Cunningham, program shows in various aesthetics, train artists autonomous, versatile and of a high level as well as fostering the emergence of new talents, this is the purpose of his project for the CNDC. Communicating to the public the foundations of a creative approach, raising awareness among young people and making the CNDC shine at the local, national and international levels are Robert Swinston's objectives for the CNDC.

The directors of the CNDC since its creation:

Alwin Nikolais (from September 1978 to July 1981)
Viola Farber (from September 1981 to July 1983)
Michel Reilhac (from March 1984 to December 1987)
Nadia Croquet (March 1988 to December 1991)
Joëlle Bouvier and Régis Obadia (from January 1993 to June 2003)
Emmanuelle Huynh (from February 2004 to December 2012)
Robert Swinston since January 2013