An extract remodelled by Danse in Progress (Noisy-le-Sec), artistic manager Gwendaël Lemonnier, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2016) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
This group of amateurs, set up in 2013, consists of teenagers and young adults aged 14 to 22, also enrolled in the Conservatoire de Danse de Noisy-le-Sec and participating in Gwendaël Lemonnier’s workshop. Their collaborations include a workshop with Dominique Brun during her time at the Théâtre des Bergeries in 2013, and two shows, Sable (2013) and Pygmaïos (2015). 

The project
Taking on the piece Éclats, which is particularly representative of Françoise Dupuy’s rhythmic research, offers the possibility of delving into the notions of improvisation and, through the use of hand drums and a metal plate, the resonance of sound in the body. The work around the relationship in space between oneself and others, and around silence, listening, breathing and pulsation, are also part of this project led by Isabelle Dufau, Françoise Dupuy’s assistant. The transmission to bodies of today of a type of unique energy and aesthetics also forms part of the challenges of this choice. 

The choreographer
A trailblazing personality of modern dance in France since the 1950s, the dancer, choreographer and pedagogue Françoise Dupuy, always inseparable from Dominique Dupuy with whom she has shared sixty-five years of work and thought on choreographic art, devised the piece Éclats in 1975 to music by Jean Schwartz. Inheriting Émile Jaques-Dalcroze’s rhythmical research and Isadora Duncan’s organic freedom, throughout her career she has refined a structured, sensitive and nuanced form of gesture. This artist, a supporter of “confrontational dance” to use Dominique Dupuy’s expression, continues to irrigate the advances of a movement “at the margin of right-thinking dance or fashionable dance.”

This dancer and choreographer founded the Ballets modernes de Paris (1954-1979) with Dominique Dupuy (whom she met while working for Jean Weidt), and the International Contemporary Dance Encounters (1969). Appointed as Dance Inspector at the French Ministry of Culture in 1987, Françoise Dupuy worked to set up the State Diploma and initiate dance in schools. In 1990 she became director of the IFEDEM Danse, which in 1996 became the Paris teaching department of the APCND (Preliminary Association for the National Dance Centre). In 1997 she created and ran, with Dominique Dupuy, the Mas de la Danse, a study and research centre for contemporary dance which operated until 2008. Since then, they have concentrated on arranging their archives, while continuing with stage appearances and teaching.

Active on all fronts – as choreographer, animateur, director of a company, researcher and teacher – Françoise Dupuy has also performed, among others, Jean Weidt's “La Cellule” (1949), Deryk Mendel's “Epithalame” (1958), Dominique Dupuy's “La Femme et Son Ombre” (1968) and Jerome Andrews' “Capture Ephémère”. She has been an associated artist at the Ballet Atlantique Régine Chopinot and choreographed “Paso”, “Visage de Terre”, “Antigone”, “Ana non” and “Eclats”. Her dancing and teaching are marked by Hellerau-Luxembourg, her “choreographic cradle”.

Françoise Dupuy died on September 15, 2022 at the age of 97.

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