An extract remodelled by Les ateliers chorégraphiques du château Coquelle (Dunkerque, Hauts-de-France), artistic manager Christine Vandenbussche, as part of the “Danse en amateur et répertoire” programme (2017/2018) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

Transmission by Darrell Davis.

Presented on 26 May 2018, Les 2 Scènes, Théâtre Ledoux, Besançon.

The piece when it was created

Firstly produced 11 March 2004 at La Rampe, Scène conventionnée danse et musiques in Échirolles 

Choreography: Jean-Claude Gallotta

Piece for 24 performers 

Groupe Grenade A: Lola Cougard, Clémence Touret, Maëlle Colleu-Hepke, Kheidija Zandad, Thomas Birzan, Rafaël Sauzet, Lucien Boilley, Barnabé Faliu

Groupe Grenade B: Anaëlle Legros, Laura Cortes, Émilie Girard, Farida Gourari, Rasmeiy Ouk, Robin Maurice, Pierre Boileau, Sofiane Merabet

Groupe Émile Dubois: Ximena Figueroa, Benjamin Houal, Ludovic Galvan, Yannick Hugron, Hee-Jin Kim, Kae Kurachi, Massa Sugiyama, Thierry Verger 

Groupe Mézall : Françoise Bal-Goetz, Mirjam Berns, Darrell Davis, Christophe Delachaux, Martin Kravitz, Anne-Marie Moenne-Loccoz, Colette Priou, Yo Xakabe

Music: Strigall

Original duration: 1h30

The group

Les ateliers chorégraphiques du château Coquelle (Dunkerque, Hauts-de-France)

The group is made up of amateur dancers who attend workshops supervised by the two teachers, Christine Vandenbussche and Nathalie Brasme, in classical, modern jazz and contemporary dance. They take part in choreographic meetings and in regional and national competitions. The aims of the choreographic workshops are technique, well-being and preparation for the stage. For this project, the group consists of 26 dancers from three different generations: children, teenagers and adults. 

The project 

Les ateliers chorégraphiques chose Jean-Claude Gallotta’s Trois générations for its intergenerational form. Children, teenagers and adults interact and, in some cases, even dance with their own families, thus strengthening the parent-child relationship. The château Coquelle has always been attentive to the diversity of bodies and to the richness that the mixing of these bodies creates, defending the idea that the body should be able to express itself freely without being confined in a merciless matrix: it is important to go beyond the body’s limits without, however, constantly struggling to correspond to an ideal defined by the fashion industries, or endangering it. The body can be supple, it can be firm, it can be soft. It has the right to be old and tired. The body is malleable but also aggressive. In this way, Trois générations places the body at the forefront through a choreography taken up by three groups of dancers with the suppleness, strength and gestures specific to each of these groups, according to their practice, experience and age.

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

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