An extract remodelled by the 48 performers of the groups that took part in the national encounter “Danse en amateur et repertoire”  (2019/2020) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing). 

Transmission by Marie-Charlotte Chevalier, Sophie Jacotot. Coordination by Marion Bastien. 

Presented on 24 October 2020, Chaillot - Théâtre national de la Danse (Paris).  

The piece when it was created  

Die Welle (The Wave) 

Firstly produced: 1930 

Choreography: Albrecht Knust 

Piece for 64 performers  

The project 

”The Wave”, created in Germany in 1930 by Albrecht Knust, one of Rudolf Laban’s earliest collaborators, is a choral dance for sixty-four people. Through waves, ebbs and flows, and ripples, this dance invites us to take part in a collective experience of interrelated listening and tuning by using simple movements such as walking, skipping and pliés. 

The 2020-edition dancers worked on ”The Wave” to bring the French National Encounters of Danse en amateur et répertoire to a close with a collective practice.  

Albrecht Knust, a dancer in folk dance groups during his youth, joined the company of German choreographer and theoretician Rudolf Laban in 1922. Knust, marked by Laban’s system of thought – which sought to rethink the role of the body in modern-day society -, devoted his life to perfecting and to transmitting Laban’s choreology, which was used to accurately transcribe movement as graphical signs (highly-sophisticated system for writing movement, choreology), firstly at the Laban School in Hamburg, where he was Head from 1924 to 1934, then, from 1951, at the Essen Folkwangschule. His numerous writings such as his Abstract of Laban choreology led to the development of this writing system around the world. As a choreographer in his own right, his works such as The Wave and The Scales focus on the principles of choreutic composition, intended for experimenting and observing the dynamics and transformations of the body in three-dimensional space.

Source: program of the 13th rencontre Danse en amateur et répertoire, 25-26 May 2019 

Film director, Ivan Chaumeille, has worked with choreographer Dominique Brun a long time, most notably in the production of + One (2014), a creative documentary scheduled as part of the festival “Vidéodanse”, in the editing of which Rafaël Gubitsch participated; he filmed and edited two versions of Afternoon of a faun, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinski for the film Le Faune -un film ou la fabrique de l’archive. He also carried out interviews, and devised and formulated the ROM and video dimensions of the DVD (2007). He shot video sequences for the show Medea-Stimmen by Virginie Mirbeau, created at Festival Les Météores CNN du Havre (2008). With a background in philosophy, he produced a creative documentary entitled Avec François Châtelet, un voyage différentiel (2010) for the collection “À Contre-temps” in co-production with Groupe Galactica, Mosaïque films and Canal 15.

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