In a sandy setting dominated by a sky obscured by clouds, two young women dance while staring boldly at the camera, hum the chorus and focus on forming childish figures. There is a visual haiku in this duo where a few objects sum up Boby Lapointe’s song and where the body, in a slow pendulum-like movement, finally melts into the rhythm of the words. Words cut into syllable slices, sounds placed end to end that echo and mark the minutes. The singer’s art, halfway between nursery rhyme and fable, is marvellously enhanced by the talent of the choreographer Valérie Rivière: her art of pace, interior and unsurpassed, works wonders. Filmed by Eric Legay, dance according to the Paul les Oiseaux company is indeed child’s play.

Source : Fabienne Arvers

Valérie Rivière has first trained in classical dance and turned later to contemporary dance.

From her first training, she has kept a disposition for excellence. During the time she spent studying in Brussels, at Mudra, she developed an open-mindedness that favours the use of other artistic forms.

She began studying dance at the Conservatoire National de Région de Bordeaux between 1974 and 1978. Then, she went to the School of Princess Grace at Monte-Carlo under the direction of Marika Besobrasova and finally entered Mudra Brussel, school of Maurice Béjart, to become a professional performer. While training in Belgium, she discovered a deep attachment to choreography and a strong interest in other artistic disciplines.

Back in France in 1987, she founded Paul les Oiseaux with Olivier Clémentz.

During the four years following the creation of the company, they both focused their work on experimenting and learned to deconstruct and rebuild a new language that has allowed them to acquire a distinctive artistic identity. In 1992, Valérie Rivière became the only choreographer of the company.

Since then, she has directed twenty five productions, every one of them exploring a different visual universe.

More information :

http://www.paullesoiseaux.com/compagny.html

The idea has all it takes to please: with the complicity of a director, a choreographer plays along by masterfully setting to dance a melody taken from the repertoire of French song, where, most often, poetry rhymes with humour and tenderness. While none of these dances resembles a video-clip supposed to illustrate the song, they are always an original choreographic proposal. A contemporary version of the old “chansons de geste” (French epic poems), they allow access, in just a few minutes, to the highly diversified universes of the choreographers. Take a song, its verses and its chorus, the interpreter’s tone of voice, the subject or the atmosphere evoked, and see what images, colours, figures and rhythms dance could give them.

Source : Fabienne Arvers