A choreographic extract remodelled by the group Arna, coordination Collectif Arna, coordination of the artistic and pedagogical project  Karine Girard as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme 2020/2022. (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).  Transmission by Sandra Savin in collaboration with Karine Girard

Presented on 18 June 2022, Maison de la danse in Lyon.

The piece when it was created 

Tragédie 

Firstly produced 23 July 2012 at the cloister of the Carmes in Avignon, during Festival d’Avignon

Choreography: Olivier Dubois 

Piece for eighteen performers: Benjamin Bertrand, Arnaud Boursain, Marie-Laure Caradec, Sylvain Decloitre, Marianne Descamps, Virginie Garcia, Karine Girard, Carole Gomes, Inès Hernández, Isabelle Kürzi, Sébastien Ledig, Filipe Lourenço, Thierry Micouin, Jorge Moré Calderón, Loren Palmer, Rafael Pardillo, Sébastien Perrault, Sandra Savin 

Music: François Caffenne

Original duration: 1h30

The group

After years of working together on shared projects, the members of Arna founded their collective in 2017. Today Arna brings together dancers from highly diverse backgrounds and professions. Over time, the group has bonded, forging relationships that help to nourish the rich movement practice of each member. Every month, the dancers meet to cultivate their choreographic and improvisational skills through research experimentation and cultural events. Their performances include a video project on improvisation in public space, and an original piece Après (2021), written in autumn, with the support of Sylvère Lamotte. For their first entry to the Amateur Dance and Repertoire programme, the dancers are delighted to work with Olivier Dubois’ majestic and powerful piece Tragédie.  

The project

Created in 2012, Oliver Dubois’ Tragédie is a major work of contemporary dance. Set to the hypnotic, percussive music of Dubois’ collaborator François Caffenne, this piece for 9 dancers, will be adapted for the 15 members of the group, who have all seen the piece performed on various occasions. Wonderfully excessive, Tragédie is a kind of contemporary rave, rock trance and tribal gathering, combined into one dazzling visual explosion. It is also a moment of pure exhalation in movement: marching, jumping, bounding, running… with images siding through the dark and the fascination of flesh. The piece's attraction lies in the way Dubois showcases questions of gender, diversity, identity and freedom. While the extract chosen does not contain nudity, the questions it raises still inform the dancers’ approach to Tragédie extended. 

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/

Film director, Ivan Chaumeille, has worked with choreographer Dominique Brun a long time, most notably in the production of + One (2014), a creative documentary scheduled as part of the festival “Vidéodanse”, in the editing of which Rafaël Gubitsch participated; he filmed and edited two versions of Afternoon of a faun, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinski for the film Le Faune -un film ou la fabrique de l’archive. He also carried out interviews, and devised and formulated the ROM and video dimensions of the DVD (2007). He shot video sequences for the show Medea-Stimmen by Virginie Mirbeau, created at Festival Les Météores CNN du Havre (2008). With a background in philosophy, he produced a creative documentary entitled Avec François Châtelet, un voyage différentiel (2010) for the collection “À Contre-temps” in co-production with Groupe Galactica, Mosaïque films and Canal 15.

Amateur Dance and Repertory is a companion program to amateur practice beyond the dance class and the technical learning phase. Intended for groups of amateur dancers, it opens a space of sharing for those who wish to deepen a practice and a knowledge of the dance in relation to its history.

Laurent Barré
 Head of Research and Choreographic Directories
Anne-Christine Waibel
 Research Assistant and Choreographic Directories
 +33 (0)1 41 83 43 96
danse-amateur-repertoire@cnd.fr

Source: CN D

More information: https://www.cnd.fr/en/page/323-danse-en-amateur-et-repertoire-grant-programme