An extract remodelled by the Street Dancers group (Kaweni), artistic manager Sophie Huvet, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2016) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
The 500 amateur hip-hop dancers of the association Hip Hop Evolution make up the pool of the Street Dancers group that units some twenty interpreters aged 14 to 20. Created in 2014 in Kaweni, Mayotte and led by Sophie Huvet, this collective had the additional challenge of responding by creation to the struggles of rival youth gangs in Mayotte. A show, Malaïka, was staged and shown in eight secondary schools.

The project
The choice of the work, Étant donné la conjoncture actuelle (1999), highlights the talents of these young hip-hop dance amateurs but in theatrical mode with a sense of humour. A festoon of colourful characters, this show makes fun of clichés with a force and panache that sweep up the entire public into the adventure. Elena Bertuzzi, Laura Scozzi’s assistant and notator, ensures the transmission of an extract from the work that “runs the risk” of being completely in harmony with the group’s vitality.

The choreographer
Somewhere in between choreography and opera, with a clear penchant for the latter since 2005, Laura Scozzi, with a background in classical, contemporary, jazz and tap dance as well as theatre before enrolling in the Milan department of sociology, emerges as an iconoclastic lookout on the contemporary dance scene. At the head of her company Opinioni in Movimento, created in 1994, Scozzi combines an aphrodisiac elixir of gestures and texts, instilled with a sense of the comical and preposterous in its most jubilant form. Alongside her shows, she regularly collaborates with stage directors such as Coline Serreau, Laurent Pelly and Sébastien Lifschitz.

Born in 1964, Laura Scozzi took her first dance classes at the  age of 6 and then explored all body techniques, from classical to  contemporary, including jazz, tap and ballroom dance. She attended the  Accademia d'Arte Drammatica in Rome and then the École de Mimodrame  Marcel Marceau in Paris. At the same time, she graduated in sociology  and explored photography. In 1994, she founded the company Opinioni in  Movimento, or which she has choreographed and directed several shows  combining dance, acting and singing. 

As a guest choreographer, she created La Dolce Vita for the Grand Théâtre de Genève’s ballet, The Seven Deadly Sins for the Paris Opera Ballet and Mes relations avec les hommes n'ont jamais été très claires for the Junior Ballet de Cannes. In 1999, she tackled hip-hop dance with Étant donné la conjoncture actuelle, continued with the musical À chacun son serpent, then Sol à sol avec poids, Quelque part par là and Barbe Neige et les 7 petits cochons au bois dormant.  On the opera, theatre and film productions, she has choreographed for  Jean-Louis Grinda, Emmanuelle Bastet, Coline Serreau, Sébastien  Lifshitz, Jean-Michel Ribes and Laurent Pelly. 

For the theatre, she directed Et puis j'm'en fous, vas-y, prends-la ma bagnole by Olivier Sferlazza at the Scène nationale d'Angoulême, followed by the musical play La vie secrète de Marioline Serin and À propos de l'homme singe at La Filature in Mulhouse. 

In 2008, Laura Scozzi directed her first opera, Benvenuto Cellini, at the Staatstheater Nürnberg, followed by The Magic Flute (Nuremberg, Bordeaux), Il viaggio a Reims (Nuremberg), nominated for ‘Der Faust’ in the best opera direction category, Orpheus in the Underworld (Bern, Bordeaux and Nuremberg), Les Indes galantes (Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nuremberg), L’Italiana in Algeri (Toulouse, Nuremberg), Akhenaton (Bonn) and in 2019 a new production of Il viaggio a Reims (Semperoper Dresden).

Source: Opéra de Paris

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