After a trip to New York in which he discovered the work of Merce Cunningham, Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton, Trisha Brown, Stuart Sherman and Yvonne Rainer, Jean-Claude Gallotta – with Mathilde Altaraz – founded the Émile Dubois Group in Grenoble in 1979, which, in 1981, joined the Grenoble Arts Centre as a dance creation unit. This was where Ulysse was born, a playful ballet using both classical and modern vocabularies.

The Émile Dubois Group became the National Choreographic Centre and took up Ulysse again in 1984 for the Olympic Games Festival in Los Angeles, the American Dance Festival, the Holland Festival and the Avignon Festival.

This was followed by: Les Aventures d’Ivan Vaffan, Les Louves and Pandora. In 1986, Jean-Claude Gallotta was asked to be the director of the Grenoble Arts Centre – renamed “Le Cargo” -, thereby becoming the first choreographer to be appointed to run this type of institution.

In 1987, the ballet Mammame was performed at the Montreal International Festival of New Dance: the Canadian press (dance and theatre) awarded him the prize for the Best Foreign Performance of the Year. In 1989, after some ten audiovisual collaborations with, for example, Claude Mouriéras and Raoul Ruiz, Jean-Claude Gallotta produced his first full-length film: Rei Dom – La Légende des Kreuls. This was followed by Docteur Labus and Les Mystères de Subal. 

Jean-Claude Gallotta then resigned as director of the Grenoble Arts Centre and published his first book, Mémoires d’un dictaphone.

During the 1991-1992 season, two choreographic creations combining dance, words and music were performed: La Légende de Roméo et Juliette, performed in November 1991 for the Albertville Olympic Arts Festival, and La Légende de Don Juan, performed in June 1992 for the Universal Exhibition in Seville, as a joint production with the Avignon Festival. Jean-Claude Gallotta then shot his second full-length film: l’Amour en deux.

1993: publication of Les Yeux qui dansent (interviews with Bernard Raffalli).
  In July of the same year, Jean-Claude Gallotta recreated Ulysse at the Châteauvallon Festival. This was followed by a long international tour.

1994: Prémonitions, a new choreography created in Grenoble. 1995: at the request of ‘Lyon Opéra Ballet’, Jean-Claude Gallotta composed La Solitude du danseur, four solos performed to music by Erik Satie. Gallotta then worked with Nicholas Hytner and Sir Charles Mackerras to produce La Petite Renarde Rusée, an opera by Leos Janacek, performed by the Théâtre du Châtelet.

At the Châteauvallon Festival, Jean-Claude Gallotta choreographed and performed the solo Hommage à Pavel Haas. In Grenoble, he created La Tête contre les fleurs for the company. This was followed in 1996 by Rue de Palanka, and in 1997, La Rue (an event for 3,000 spectators) and the creation of La Chamoule ou l’Art d’aimer.

A longstanding collaboration was set up with Japan, at the invitation of the director Tadashi Suzuki: from 1997 to 2000, Jean-Claude Gallotta ran the dance department at the new Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre, training and directing a permanent company of eight Japanese performers. In 1998, Jean-Claude Gallotta also directed Le Ventriloque by Jean-Marie Piemme and Le Catalogue by Jean-Bernard Pouy, and wrote Pierre Chatel for “l’Adieu au siècle”.

Jean-Claude Gallotta created Les Variations d’Ulysse for the Paris Opera Ballet, which was performed at the Opéra Bastille in 1995, and repeated in 1998. He also created Nosferatu in May 2002 to music by Pascal Dusapin; the ballet was performed again in spring 2006 at the Opéra Bastille.

In 1999, he created Presque Don Quichotte at the Douai Hippodrome; the piece was also performed in Shizuoka, Japan. In 2000, he created l’Incessante, a solo for Mathilde Altaraz, at the Avignon Festival as part of Le Vif du Sujet. In 2001, he created Les Larmes de Marco Polo for the Lyon International Biennial.

In 2002, he created 99 duos at the Chaillot National Theatre, the first part of a trilogy on ‘People’. In 2003, he prepared Trois générations for the Avignon Festival, which was eventually cancelled. The piece, which includes children, former dancers and the Company, was performed at the Rampe d’Echirolles in March 2004.

It was performed in May of the same year at the Chaillot National Theatre and was repeated in November 2005. The same year, he worked with the director Hans-Peter Cloos to produce a show combining dance, theatre and music, Les sept pechés capitaux by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. In 2006, he created Des Gens qui dansent, the third part of the trilogy initiated by 99 duos and Trois Générations and, in 2007, he repeated his flagship piece from the 80s, Ulysse, under the title Cher Ulysse.

In 2008, Bach danse experience with Mirella Giardelli and “L’Atelier des Musiciens du Louvre”; Armide by Lully with the conductor William Christie and the director Robert Carsen at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris; Chroniques chorégraphiques - season 1, a sort of “stage movie” that allowed him to pursue his poetic research into genres and people.

In 2009, he created l’Homme à tête de chou, with the original words and music by Serge Gainsbourg in a version recorded for the show by Alain Bashung. In April 2011, he performed a solo with Faut qu’je danse ! as a prelude to the recreation of his trio Daphnis é Chloé in Grenoble.

In October 2011, again in Grenoble and with a piece for thirteen dancers, he took on Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, which he presented in April 2012 at the Chaillot National Theatre, Paris, along with Tumulte and Pour Igor in the first part.

At the end of 2012, he is to present Racheter la mort des gestes - Chroniques chorégraphiques 1 at the Théâtre de la Ville, then at MC2; in early 2013, his recreation of Yvan Vaffan (first performed in 1984) will enable him to continue his work on the repertoire, alternating with his creations and thereby pleading for a certain “continuity in art” and seeking patiently to share with his audience the same story: the story of a shared artistic history and future.

In October 2013, he directed the singer Olivia Ruiz in El Amor Brujo byManuel de Falla, a piece presented together with Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, a show on which he worked together with the conductor Marc Minkowski and the director Jacques Osinski.

For the 2014-15 season, he presented The Rite and its Revolutions (including the first performance of Xenakis’s Jonchaies and Six Pieces for Orchestra, op. 6 by Webern (Homage to Angela Davis) at the Philharmonie de Paris, and in June he gave the first performance of The Stranger, based on the novel by Albert Camus at the MC2 in Grenoble.

He is opening the 2015-2016 season with My Rock at the MC2 in Grenoble, and at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris.

In 2009, he adapted Serge Gainsbourg's album l'Homme à tête de chou (performed for the occasion by Alain Bashung), created with singer Olivia Ruiz, Volver, presented in 2016 at the Biennale de la danse de Lyon; he also worked on rock figures with My Rock (2004) then My Ladies Rock (2017). In September 2017, the Adami, Maison des artistes interprètes and the Théâtre du Rond-Point gave him carte blanche to stage two exceptional evenings around the work of Bob Dylan, with performers from all disciplines, including the group Moriarty.

Since the end of 2015, Jean-Claude Gallotta has been associate author at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris. The Groupe Émile Dubois is housed at the MC2: Grenoble.

In September 2018, he presented Comme un trio, based on Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, and the re-creation of l'Homme à tête de chou at the Printemps de Bourges festival in April 2019. He is preparing a new creation for the autumn of 2020, entitled Le Jour se rêve, with musician Rodolphe Burger and visual artist Dominique-Gonzalez Foerster.

More information : www.gallotta-danse.com

Olivier Dubois has been shaking up the French contemporary dance  scene for more than a decade with some of the most radical choreographic  work to date.

The director of Ballet du Nord from 2014 to 2017, he was named one  of the twenty-five best dancers in the world in 2011 by Dance Europe  magazine and boasts a unique experience working between creation,  interpretation and pedagogy.

Olivier Dubois has performed for Angelin Preljocaj, Cirque du  Soleil, Jan Fabre, Dominique Boivin, Sasha Waltz and many others. In  2006, he was invited by the French Authors’ Society SACD and the  Festival d’Avignon to create a piece as part of its ‘Les Sujets à vif’  series. His work Pour tout l’or du monde (For All the Gold in the World) subsequently received the jury prize from the Professional Critics’ Association. At the 2008 Festival d’Avignon, he created Faune(s), based on the famous piece by Nijinski, and won the Prix Jardin d’Europe, the European prize for emerging choreography.

His exhibition L’interprète dévisagé (The Faceless Interpreter) at the Centre National de la Danse in Paris in 2009 was well received.

In 2010, he presented Spectre, a commission by the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, and created L’homme de l’Atlantique, a duet based on the music of Frank Sinatra, for the Lyon Dance Biennale.

In 2009, he started the trilogy Étude critique pour un trompe-l’œil (Critical Study for a Trompe L’Oeil) with the creation of Révolution (Revolution) at the Ménagerie de Verre in Paris, followed by the solo Rouge (Red) in 2011 and concluded by the provocative Tragédie (Tragedy), created at the Festival d’Avignon in 2012.

As part of Marseille 2013, European Capital of Culture, Dubois created Élégie (Elegy) for the National Ballet of Marseille. The same year he was named best choreographer at the Danza & Danza Awards for Tragédie and Élégie.

In 2015, he created two new pieces: Mon élue noire Sacre #2, a solo for Germaine Acogny, and Les Mémoires d’un seigneur, performed by a dancer from the Company and 40 male amateur dancers.

Olivier Dubois also shares his creations with amateur dancers. In 2011, Envers et face à tous (Against and Facing All) was performed by 120 dancers at Prisme d’Élancourt, followed in 2013 by Origami, which featured 1,000 lower grade and high school students from Roubaix. During the last Nuit Blanche in Paris, he staged Mille et une danses (Thousand and One Dances) with the participation of 300 amateur dancers. Dubois also collaborates with the Ballet Junior de Genève training school.

The trilogy Étude critique pour un trompe-l’œil (Critical Study for a Trompe L’Oeil) was concluded in 2016 with Auguri,  a piece for 22 dancers that premiered at the International Summer  Festival Kampnagel in Hamburg and was presented for the first time in  France at the Biennale de Lyon. In February 2017, Olivier Dubois  produced De l’origine (Of the Origin) for the Royal Swedish Ballet and 7 x Rien (7 x Nothing), his first piece for young audiences.

In spring 2018, he performed a solo titled Pour sortir au jour (Coming Forth by Day),  for which the premiere took place at the Festival de Marseille. The  following year, Olivier Dubois created a new piece for 8 dancers and one  musician, Tropismes, presented recently at  CentQuatre-Paris. The result of two years of work between Egypt and  France, its new French-Egyptian creation for 7 Egyptian performers  (music and dance), Itmahrag premiered in January 2021 at La Filature, Scène nationale de Mulhouse.

In July 2022, he re-created Tragédie, new edit (2012) with some of
the former dancers and young performers for the Marseille
Festival, then on tour across Europe.

Source and more information: https://www.olivierdubois.org/en/

David Wampach trained with the company Coline in Istres (99), CCN de Montpellier (00) and P.A.R.T.S./Bruxelles (01). He has worked with Anne Lopez, Thierry Baë, Christian Bourigault, Mitia Fedotenko, Mathilde Monnier, Julie Brochen, Odile Duboc, João Fiadeiro, Alain Michard, Catherine Contour, Christian Rizzo.

He started his personal work with his inscription in the Association Achles and he created the pieces :
- lambda if I include myself, kappa the piece itself (2001), performance for 10 dancers, created in Brussels,
- D ES R A (2003), a duo created with Pierre Mourles,
- circon c is (2004), laureate of the Solo Mio competition and laureate of the Biennale Festival of young creators from Europe and the Mediterranean (Naples),
- BASCULE (2005), trio created for the Printemps de Septembre / Soirées Nomades at Fondation Cartier / CDC Toulouse,
- QUATORZE (2007), quatuor created for the Montpellier Danse Festival,
- AUTO (2008), duet, created for the Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis,
- BATTERIE (2008), performance for a dancer and a drummer, premiered at the Accès(s) festival in Pau,
- BATTEMENT (2009), trio created during the SKITe/Sweet & Tender Collaborations in Porto,
- ECRAN (2010) created with the author Jérôme Game for the ActOral festival,
- CASSETTE (2010), performance for 8 performers, premiered at Scène Nationale d'Alès.
David Wampach presented SACRE for the Montpellier Danse 2011 festival in June, before leaving for Kyôto, Japan, as laureate of Villa Kujoyama.

Etienne Aussel is a director of documentary films, multi-camera recordings, dance films. Videographer for performing arts and digital arts, he directs audiovisual projects. Trained as a shooting operator, he entered professional life in 1999 through contemporary dance and until 2008 worked as a video collaborator with choreographers José Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu on creations and international tours of shows (Paradis, Babelle Heureuse, On danƒe, Les Paladins, Porgy and Bess).
Tour de Babelle A first documentary on dance of which he is the author was broadcast in 2004 on the Mezzo channel.
In 2009 he followed the training course in documentary cinema at the Ateliers Varan in Paris.
Two of his films made in French-speaking West Africa, Mowa and Autour de Tassiga, are distributed by Éditions l'Harmattan.
Between 2013 and 2015, he directed with Valérie Gabail the film SACRES, a feature documentary in official competition at FIPADOC in Biarritz and awarded at various international festivals.
He collaborates in video with artists such as the painter Guy Oberson, the choreographers Nasser Martin-Gousset, Aïcha M'Barek and Hafiz Dhaou, or the Nobel Prize for Literature Gao Xingjian whose latest feature film Le Deuil de la beauté is edited. .
In 2012 and 2016, he co-signed with choreographer Claire Jenny the staging of two pieces: Effigies, interactive video installations and performances broadcast at the National Center for Dance in Pantin, at the Abbaye de Noirlac and Echo, a piece choreography for 5 dancers (shown at the Atelier de Paris, at the CDA d'Enghien-les-Bains, at the Théâtre de Vitry)
At the same time, he teaches video creation for live shows at the 3IS film school and edits 52-minute films for various production companies. Holder of a Master 2 D2A in Law, Economics and Audiovisual Management and 2017, he is involved as assistant to the coordination and in the selection committee of the International Documentary Film Festival Après Varan for the edition 2019.
He works regularly as a director or chief editor at the Théâtre National de la Danse - Chaillot, at the CN D Cinémathèque de la danse or at the Atelier de Paris - CDCN, with the production companies 24 Images and Films d'un jour / OPSIS TV.

Personal website with extracts of his achievements: etienneaussel.wixsite.com