When conventional language falls short, the body,  inhabited by the senses, becomes a vehicle for stories and  dialog-building between the protagonists. Finding a middle ground  through movement is among the objectives central to Johanna Faye’s  creative gesture. The resulting conversation stems from the  choreographer’s multiple sources of inspiration, where the importance of  the relationship to the dance floor, rooted in her practice as a b-girl, is coupled with verticality and a sensory approach to contemporary dance.

Johanna Faye strives to rehabilitate this non-verbal language as a  need to draw our attention back to our instinctive sense of self.  Starting with Iskio (2015), her first choreographic attempt  written and performed as a duo with Saïdo Lehlouh, Johanna explores a  one-on-one relationship, where otherness becomes a foothold for the  individual. Moving from a duo to a group, the two members of the Black  Sheep dance company take it to the next level in Fact (2017), a  piece for seven performers in which both the human and material  environments prompt the dancers to reshape their mutual interactions in  motion.

Lastly, Johanna Faye finds a narrative balance to her inaugural  independent piece in the magic number represented by the trio. Meaning  literally “far within” or “away from” in Portuguese, Afastado Em (2018) traces the intertwining paths of three female dancers, each representing a divergent practice: flamenco, Krumping,  and contemporary dance. In a decelerating tug-of-war, the piece figures  an introspective insight into the characters through an external  gesture, such as the act of contemplative breathing in tandem.

Together, Johanna Faye and Saïdo Lehlouh created Earthbound (2021),  a celebration through dance of the rebel and underground hip hop  scene’s diversity which questions the stage’s performative codes.  Emerging from her encounter with clarinetist Guillaume Humery, jazz  pianist Léo Jassef and dancer-jiujitsuka Julien Fouché, Inner (2022) is a shared introspection where body and music echo each other spontaneously.

Source : site du CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne

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instagram : @johfaye @cieblacksheep @ccnrb.faire

Although Linda Hayford is best known as an  ambassador for popping, her dance practice has evolved through the  encounter between genres and moves. Above all a practitioner of upright  dance inspired by funk and its diverse aesthetics, she is driven by a  desire for versatility and a blend of styles that calls for team  battles, which brings her into contact with hype, of course popping, as  well as locking, the new style, and house. As part of the group  Paradox-sal, launched by Ousmane Sy, and the INsideOut dance company she  founded, the Rennes-based dancer and choreographer adopts an open-ended  and plural approach.

Taking a crossover of styles as her starting point, Linda Hayford  finds a common thread between multiple emotional and physical states and  focuses her aesthetic research on metamorphosis. Her inaugural solo Shapeshifting  materializes the power represented by the passage from one form to  another in an intimate fresco that deploys a succession of chimeras. In  the process of this quest for transformation, the switch-point or the  flipping point between forms and energies charts the course of action  sustained by the desire to get closer to the animal side of the body.

In AlShe/Me (2019, pronounced as “alchimie” in French,  meaning “chemistry”), Linda Hayford appears on stage alongside her older  brother, Mike Hayford. Years after having given her a leg up in the  world of popping, the dancer accompanies his sister in a duo that  focuses on the ephemeral character of the genre. Created in 2022, Recovering  invites 3 performers to reflect on the healing process following a  trauma through the transmission and appropriation of different tools  from Linda Hayford’s “Shifting Pop” vocabulary. 

For Linda Hayford, alteration has become an object of reflection on  the constantly changing nature of identity, where every stage embodies a  facet of humanity, culminating in the complexity of displacement.

Source: site du CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne

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Bouside Ait Atmane’s encounter with dance almost appears as the  result of a misstep. From his first introductory hip hop sessions,  conducted by Emmanuel Oponga, Bouside seemed to be made for breakdance  and floor work, giving little hint that he would spend his life dancing  upright. And yet it is in the vertical position, under the banner of locking, a dance style closely tied to funk and spontaneity, that he came into his own as a performer, and later as a dancer and choreographer.

Inside the circle – the center-stage of the battle – “Zid”  gives a show of skill and force. In France and abroad, alone or with a  crew, building on the energy of confrontation, he has developed a  penchant for a direct language. This vocabulary gave birth in 2015 to Dans l’arène,  a show jointly choreographed with Yanka Pédron, the other face of the  YZ dance company. This piece for two dancers speaks to unmediated  inspiration drawn from confrontation: alternating between workouts and  moments of strife, it bridges the gap that traditionally separates  battle and stage choreography.

Created two years later, R1R2 Start was the first project  written entirely by Bouside Ait Atmane. Here, the choreographer plays  with digital coding and real actions in a courseware-like tribute to  video game culture. This piece marks a “recovery point” in Bouside’s  career, analogous to his interpretation of “Tetris” with the group  Géométrie Variable.

Keen on innovation, Bouside Ait Atmane imagined several battle concepts: The Ones invites crews from various dance styles to compete against each other; Fighting Dance Battle, co-produced with the association 3 Hit Combo, confronts 2 teams, each composed by a dancer and a fighting game player.

Bouside’s projects give form to a unique choreographic intention that  emphasizes musical gesture as a technical and aesthetic accomplishment,  drawing as much on the pugnacity of the protagonists on stage as on  creative chance.

Source: site du CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne

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In the mid-90s, the style produced by the Parisian b-boying scene stunned the world with a new vision of breakdance. Wild Cat,  Saïdo Lehlouh’s first choreographic attempt, created in 2018,  foregrounds this style distinguished by its fluidity and its truly  feline refinement. The dancer and choreographer’s stint as a breaker  with the Bad Trip Crew informs the sincerity of his gesture which tends  toward introspection and submission to gravity while lending explosive  force to his performance within the circle.

Having cut his teeth on street dance, the choreographer offers an  alternative sequel to his début show with his 2019 composition, Apaches.  Saïdo Lehlouh makes use of the authenticity afforded by improvisation  in a versatile stage piece that perpetually adapts to the context of  each performance. Whether in a public space or on stage, Apaches  arranges bodies and sets them to rhythm in a transitional space where  the circulating energies and sincere intentionality are the message.

By taming the floor through touch, “Darwin” continuously builds a  corporal vocabulary responsive to the needs of the moment. With his  partner Johanna Faye, the other member of the Black Sheep dance company,  Saïdo Lehlouh explores in Iskio (2015), and later in Fact (2017), the possibilities of speaking out in a choreographic dialog. Together, Saïdo Lehlouh and Johanna Faye created Earthbound (2021),  a celebration through dance of the rebel and underground hip hop  scene’s diversity which questions the stage’s performative codes.

Saïdo Lehlouh is associate artist fo Théâtre de la Ville-Paris and Cratère, scène nationale of Alès.

Source:  CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne

Since his first footwork nearly thirty years ago,  Ousmane Sy has worked to translate his fascination with the  orchestrated movement of a soccer team into dance. His artistic world,  occupying various fields, is made up of step-overs, lunges between the  dance floor and the stage, and the irrepressible desire to overcome  oneself through the group.

One foot in the club, the other in battle: Ousmane Sy, nicknamed  “Babson,” stakes his belonging to house dance between these two spaces  of expression, becoming one of its major proponents in France. With the  “Battle of the Year,” won in 2001 with his crew the “Wanted Posse,” he  brought the “French touch” to the forefront of the international scene  by transposing androgynous gestures inspired by New York nightclubs into  the heart of the contest. Extending far beyond the boundaries of the  Marshall Plan, his dance practice has gradually turned to the hybrid  histories and African lineages of house rhythms. The result was “Afro  House Spirit,” a contemporary dance style marked by the heritage of  traditional African and Caribbean dances.

The driving force behind All 4 House, Ousmane Sy endeavors to  harmonize, through the mise-en-scène of a multi-act performance, the  individual pathways of the female dancers from the group Paradox-Sal,  whom he has trained in house dance for years. Queen Blood (2019) and One Shot  (2021) were born from this approach: two “corps de ballets” alternating  between group choreographies and expressive solos for an encounter of  styles in the joyful spirit of confrontation. Ousmane Sy’s aesthetic  exploration is influenced as much by the mass as by the freestyle spirit  of hip hop. He strongly believes that identity must serve entity.

Source: CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne