Choreography by Carlotta Ikeda and Ko Murobushi
A choreographic extract remodelled by the amateur dance workshop of the Conservatoire de La Roche-sur-Yon, artistic and technical coordinator Dominique Petit, administrative coordinator Ludovic Potié, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2014) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Dominique Petit leads an amateur dance workshop at the Conservatoire de La Roche-sur-Yon. The weekly sessions are attended by adults of very varying technical levels and ages (twenty-three to sixty years for the current project), some of which have been present ever since its creation fifteen years ago. The group presents in public its choreographic works derived from workshop practices. However, the transmission of Carlotta Ikeda and Ko Murobushi’s Haru no Saïten is the first time it has been confronted with an already existing 100% professional script. This is proof of the positive trace of the impact left in 2012 by the hosting of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” national meeting at the Grand R, the town’s national theatre.

The choreographers
The entire artistic life of Carlotta Ikeda, born in 1941 and who died in 2014, is inseparable from butoh, of which she was one of the major initiators in France, at the turn of the 1980s. First collaborating with Ko Murobushi, she then created in 1974 her own company Ariadone, an all-female troupe. In the following decade, she developed most of her career in France, practicing what would be characterised as “free butoh”. In 1999, six female dancers interpreted Haru no Saïten, un sacre du printemps (a rite of spring). Freed from the bonds of Stravinsky’s music, this piece engages the powers of chaos, eros and the cosmos, not without impregnation by death, transcending the figure of the young girls dancing on the stage. 

The artist
Valérie Pujol spent almost all her professional career as an interpreter with the company Ariadone. Haru no Saïten (1999) was the first creation in which she participated. She appreciates the mature age of the female amateur dancers to whom she transmits an extract today. Indeed, the practice of butoh dance leaves no-one unscathed, with the states of letting go, laying bare, and even close to trance, that it induces, not to mention an expressivity that must be mastered. All the weekly workshops also touch on this quest for a tension never to be let go, that must be kept just right at all times, although in a state of continuous transformation. In this instance, transmission is understood as a putting back into play, far more than a re-creation. 

Born in 1957 in Tokyo, Ko Murobushi is one of the best known and acclaimed Butoh artists in the world, and is recognized as a leading inheritor of Hijikata’s vision of Butoh.

He studied with Hijikata from 1968 and after a short experience as a “Yamabushi” mountain Monk, he founded a Butoh group Dairakudakan together with Akaji Maro and others. In 1974, he created a Butoh magazine “Hageshii Kisetsu (Violent Season)”, and in the same year, he founded a female Butoh company Ariadone with Carlotta Ikeda and also choreographed them.   In 1976, he founded a male Butoh group Sebi, and as a co-producer of those two groups, he introduced Butoh to Europe with big sensation.

Le dernier Eden -Porte de l'au-dela succeeded in Paris in 1978, and was followed by a big tour throughout Europe with Ariadone in 1981/82. From 1985, he concentrated on duo-productions with Urara Kusanagi and toured in Europe and South America in the following years. While he continues to open his dance and Butoh to the worldwide influences, he tries to research his work much deeper into its Japanese roots.

With his solo productions “Edge 01”, “Edge 02” and a group production “Edge 03”, he was invited by several international dance festivals; ImPulsTanz Festival, Montpellier Dance Festival, London Butoh Network Festival, and more. He has received numerous awards for residencies worldwide, including Mexico, India, and the U.S. He is also in great demand as a workshop facilitator and an artistic director of the ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna. Through his workshops, many dancers got stimulated to find their own ways of dance. In 2003, he formed a unit called Ko&Edge Co. with three Japanese dancers and presented “Handsome Blue Sky” in “JADE2003 Hijikata Memorial” which brought considerable applause in Japan.

In 2004, this unit presented a new series titled “Experimental Body” which is to search the “edge” in a physical way. His choreography as well as his solo performance keeps his impregnable position as one of the most reputed representatives of Butoh, and he tirelessly challenges to reach new possibility. At the same time, he doesn’t hesitate to collaborate with various artists to continue to confirm his way and research more deeply. His latest solo performance is called “quick silver”. This acclaimed piece is leading him to a world tour, giving the audience much impression of a new era.

In 2008, he met Bartabas in Japan and decided to create together "The Centaur and the Animal" in 2010.

Kô Murobushi died in June 2015.

Source: Network Dance (article untitled "Butoh Legend Ko Murobushi Passes Away", 2015)

More information : ko-murobushi.com

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