Mort de rire
1987 - Director : Picq, Charles
Choreographer(s) : Monnier, Mathilde (France) Duroure, Jean-François (France)
Present in collection(s): Maison de la danse , Saisons 1980 > 1989
Video producer : Maison de la Danse de Lyon
Integral video available at Maison de la danse de Lyon
Mort de rire
1987 - Director : Picq, Charles
Choreographer(s) : Monnier, Mathilde (France) Duroure, Jean-François (France)
Present in collection(s): Maison de la danse , Saisons 1980 > 1989
Video producer : Maison de la Danse de Lyon
Integral video available at Maison de la danse de Lyon
Mort de rire
The stage is in the mess of a laugh, like a mouth twisting with laughter. At first glance, it is death that is challenged by laughter. But in reality, death is not the exact subject: from a definite substantive, it quickly becomes an indeterminate adjective. Undetermined. Nervous. To die becomes the adjective of laughter. Laughter has a very short life. It can quickly disappear and spoil even faster. In the confusion between provoking and representing the smile, the work and the sense of the theater have great difficulty in surviving. They risk suffocating there. They can struggle unnecessarily until they die, precisely ... to have the illusion of saving or postponing as much as possible the end of the laughter.
Source : Mathilde Monnier
En savoir plus : mathildemonnier.com
Monnier, Mathilde
Mathilde Monnier occupies a place of reference in the landscape of French and international contemporary dance. From piece to piece, she thwarts expectations by presenting work in constant renewal.
Her appointment as head of the Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon Choreographic Center in 1994 marked the beginning of a series of collaborations with personalities from various artistic fields (Jean-Luc Nancy, Katerine, Christine Angot, La Ribot, Heiner Goebbels.. .).
She created more than 50 choreographic pieces presented on major international stages like the Avignon Festival, the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, passing through New York, Vienna, Berlin, London and receiving several prizes for her work (Ministry of Culture prize, SACD Grand Prize).
After directing the CND National Dance Center in Paris, Mathilde Monnier resumed her creative work in 2019 with several pieces like Please Please Please (2019) which she created in collaboration with La Ribot & Tiago Rodiguez, Records (2021) and her latest, Black Lights (2023).
Since 2020, Mathilde Monnier and her company have residing at the Halle Tropisme in Montpellier.
Source and more information: https://www.mathildemonnier.com/en/
Duroure, Jean-François
Jean-François Duroure, an accomplished gymnast at the age of ten, went on to take dance courses with Odile Duboc, Josette Baiz and then Andy Degroat, Mark Tompkins and Hideyuki Yano. At the age of fourteen, he took classes with Dominique Bagouet, who had just moved to Montpellier. He graduated from the Fédération Française, specialising in classical and jazz dance, at the age of 16. Accepted at The Place in London, at 16 he chose to study at the Centre national de danse contemporaine d'Angers (CNDC), which was about to open with Viola Farber, an American choreographer. After seven months at the school, he joined Viola Farber's company, a disciple of Merce Cunningham, and danced with François Verret, where he met Mathilde Monnier. In 1984, he won a grant from the French Ministry of Culture. They both moved to New York to study the Cunningham technique of this great American master choreographer and teacher.
Jean-François Duroure and Mathilde Monnier created their first mischievous, combative and humorous duet, Pudique Acide in 1984 in New York. Accompanied by music by Kurt Weill, this duet is an irreverent and virtuoso explosion, a mixture of genres in the impertinence of the costumes, tutus and white frills, kilts and the choice of music. Their dance explodes and explores all the possibilities of appearances and being. Their second duet, Extasis, was created in 1985 at the Maison de la danse in Lyon.
At the age of 19, a week after the creation of Pudique Acide, Pina Bausch hired him at the Tanztheater de Wuppertal in Germany, where he took part in the creation of Auf dem Gebirge hat man ein Geschrei gehört, and then took on the role of Jacques Patarozzi in Renate wandert aus.
Created at the height of the emergence of the young, freedom-loving French contemporary dance scene of the 80s, Pudique acide and its second part Extasis marked a turning point, projecting the dancers into their own era. This was followed by De Hexe, Mort de rire and the film Nuit de Chine (1987). Their universe brought a sparkling, virtuoso freshness, emblematic of the pivotal episode in the history of young French dance.
In 1988, he founded the Jean-François Duroure company. He created La Anqâ (1988), La Maison des plumes vertes (1988), Cosmono nox (1990) and C'est à midi que l'obscurité s'achève (1991). In 1993, three new works were presented at the Festival d'Avignon at the Cloître des Célestins: Le Langage des Oiseaux, L'Ephémère and La Nuit Partagée. The latter paved the way for the first large-scale collaboration combining contemporary dance and urban dance. A number of choreographers went on to explore these new horizons.
Rossignol & Palimpseste (1993) opened the field of children's theatre with an uncompromisingly creative approach. After a tour of over 80 dates in France, he flew to Ghana in 1994 to work with the National Ballet of Ghana. 1995 was the year of jazz and a memorable collaboration with the Compagnie Lubat, with whom he created a flamboyant baroque show entitled L'Enchantier, a musical trans that opened the Sigma Festival in Bordeaux. It was also the occasion of a memorable artistic encounter with accordionist Marc Perrone for a luminous, cinematic duet.
In 1996, the Fin de Siècle Festival in Nantes, which paid a major tribute to South Africa by inviting over 200 artists, commissioned Jean-François Duroure to open the evening at the Palais des Congrès. His work What are you doing here? was created after more than 18 months in residence in Johannesburg (Soweto, Eastrand and Alexandra). Strongly supported by Mandela's new government, the show was performed at the legendary The Market Theater in Johannesburg before touring France and Durban in Kwazulu Natal.
Barbara Masekela, a leading figure in the anti-apartheid struggle and South Africa's ambassador to France, will be attending a special performance at Le Manège in Reims. Jean-François Duroure explores all areas of creation: choreography, body and voice, text and choreographic writing. He choreographed three plays directed by Georges Lavaudant: Terra incognita (1993), Hamlet (1994) and Lumières (1995), on a play directed by Marcel Maréchal, Les Enfants du Paradis (1997), then on Peer Gynt (2004) with director Patrick Pineau.
Mathilde Monnier recreated Pudique acide / Extasis with Jean-François Duroure at the Montpellier Danse Festival (2011), with the aim of reappropriating and transmitting a creative material to two new dancers. For Jean-François Duroure, dance is transmission.
In 2001, he became choreographer in charge of choreographic studies at the Conservatoire Cité de la Danse et de la Musique in Strasbourg, where he refined his teaching of dance improvisation and individual creation as an expression of human interiority. Jean-François Duroure has developed a personal teaching style based on the study of movement, its dynamics and quality, and the necessary stage presence that can be achieved in conjunction with other arts, particularly music.
SACD joins all the authors it represents in sending its sincere condolences to her family and friends.
Joanne Leighton, Vice-President of Music and Dance at SACD.
Source : SACD
Picq, Charles
Author, filmmaker and video artist Charles Picq (1952-2012) entered working life in the 70s through theatre and photography. A- fter resuming his studies (Maîtrise de Linguistique - Lyon ii, Maîtrise des sciences et Techniques de la Communication - grenoble iii), he then focused on video, first in the field of fine arts at the espace Lyonnais d'art Contemporain (ELAC) and with the group « Frigo », and then in dance.
On creation of the Maison de la Danse in Lyon in 1980, he was asked to undertake a video documentation project that he has continued ever since. During the ‘80s, a decade marked in France by the explosion of contemporary dance and the development of video, he met numerous artists such as andy Degroat, Dominique Bagouet, Carolyn Carlson, régine Chopinot, susanne Linke, Joëlle Bouvier and regis Obadia, Michel Kelemenis. He worked in the creative field with installations and on-stage video, as well as in television with recorded shows, entertainment and documentaries.
His work with Dominique Bagouet (80-90) was a unique encounter. He documents his creativity, assisting with Le Crawl de Lucien and co-directing with his films Tant Mieux, Tant Mieux and 10 anges. in the 90s he became director of video development for the Maison de la Danse and worked, with the support of guy Darmet and his team, in the growing space of theatre video through several initiatives:
- He founded a video library of dance films with free public access. This was a first for France. Continuing the video documentation of theatre performances, he organised their management and storage.
- He promoted the creation of a video-bar and projection room, both dedicated to welcoming school pupils.
- He started «présentations de saisons» in pictures.
- He oversaw the DVD publication of Le tour du monde en 80 danses, a pocket video library produced by the Maison de la Danse for the educational sector.
- He launched the series “scènes d'écran” for television and online. He undertook the video library's digital conversion and created Numeridanse.
His main documentaries are: enchaînement, Planète Bagouet, Montpellier le saut de l'ange, Carolyn Carlson, a woman of many faces, grand ecart, Mama africa, C'est pas facile, Lyon, le pas de deux d'une ville, Le Défilé, Un rêve de cirque.
He has also produced theatre films: Song, Vu d'ici (Carolyn Carlson), Tant Mieux, Tant Mieux, 10 anges, Necesito and So schnell, (Dominique Bagouet), Im bade wannen, Flut and Wandelung (Susanne Linke), Le Cabaret Latin (Karine Saporta), La danse du temps (Régine Chopinot), Nuit Blanche (Abou Lagraa), Le Témoin (Claude Brumachon), Corps est graphique (Käfig), Seule et WMD (Françoise et Dominique Dupuy), La Veillée des abysses (James Thiérrée), Agwa (Mourad Merzouki), Fuenteovejuna (Antonio Gades), Blue Lady revistied (Carolyn Carlson).
Source: Maison de la Danse de Lyon
Mort de rire
Choreography : Mathilde Monnier, Jean-François Duroure
Interpretation : Fabrice Dasse, Herman Diephuis, Joël Luecht, Elena Majnoni, Mathilde Monnier, Loïc Touzé, Jean-François Duroure
Set design : Béatrice Scarpato
Lights : Eric Wurtz
Costumes : Corinne Baudelot
Sound : Christophe Sechet
40 years of dance and music
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