[dance masterclass with Elsa Wolliaston] 

“I awaken in the body each person's rhythm. One needs to feel the strong point inside, which is also the weak point. It is in the awareness of this alternation that everyone can find that personal rhythm. Just repeating that Africans have rhythm in the blood is idiotic. The most one can say is that peoples that walk, Africans, Indians, listen to the body more closely. It is energy that gives birth to form, and not form that creates energy. It is hard for my students to learn how to discover this, for they sense where the thread of their life passes through and where, one day, it will break…” Elsa Wolliaston

Elsa Wolliaston begins this masterclass by working with sound during warm-ups, then chants, repetitive dances based on walking (leaving the hut, hunting dance, kakilambe), rhythm work with musician Jean-Yves Colson and improvisations.

Updating: November 2010

Elsa Wolliaston moved to Paris in 1969 and worked with Jerome Andrews and Lilian Arlen. She continued her training during a stay in Africa, and researched ancestral rites. From 1970 onwards, she performed in various African countries and Niger in particular, where she danced “La Fleuve” in 1974. In Paris in 1975, she founded the company Ma Danse Rituel Théâtre with Yano Hideyuki. They choreographed and performed numerous pieces together. She has also composed music and dance duets with the saxophonist Steve Lacy. She choreographs regularly for the theatre and opera, trains actors in movement at the Theaterhaus Interkurst and Theatertreffin in Berlin, and teaches African-inspired contemporary dance throughout the world.

Further information

Digital resource - Médiathèque du Centre national de la danse
http://mediatheque.cnd.fr/spip.php?page=mediatheque-numerique-ressource&id=PHO00003898

Updating: November 2010

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).