Il y a une vingtaine d’années, le B-boy de Saint-Priest Mourad Merzouki grimpait littéralement aux murs de la Maison de la Danse de Lyon. Avec Vertikal,  on le retrouve dans une nouvelle exploration de l’espace. À partir d'un  dispositif proposé par Fabrice Guillot de la compagnie Retouramont, spécialiste des techniques aériennes, le chorégraphe quitte le sol.  Après s’être confronté à la troisième dimension avec Pixel, il ouvre un nouveau champ des possibles pour le hip hop.
À la verticale donc, trouvant de nouveaux appuis, dix danseurs  s’élancent dans les airs. « Le rapport au sol, primordial pour le  danseur hip hop, dit Mourad Merzouki, est fondamentalement modifié. Les  jeux de contacts entre les interprètes sont bousculés : le danseur est  tour à tour socle et porteur ou au contraire voltigeur, marionnette  animée par le contrepoids de ses partenaires au sol. »
Le compositeur Armand Amar accompagne les voltiges en fusionnant cordes  et instruments électroniques. Une création qui tisse des liens et trace  de nouvelles lignes de fuite dans l’espace tout en conservant le  vocabulaire de la danse hip hop.

Source : Maison de la Danse de Lyon

A major figure on the hip-hop scene since the early 1990s, Merzouki works at the crossroads of many different disciplines: he adds circus, martial arts, fine arts, video and live music to his exploration of hip-hop dance. Without losing sight of the roots of hip-hop movement – of its social and geographical origins – this multidisciplinary approach opens new horizons and reveals original outlooks. Since 1996, 30 creations have been performed in 700 cities and 65 countries, with more than 3,000 performances given for 1.7 million people. Since 2009, Merzouki is director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne, where he created the festival Kalypso, a Parisian twin of his festival Karavel in the region of Lyon. In 2016, he is also appointed artistic director of Pôle en Scènes in Bron.

More information : http://ccncreteil.com/

Born in 1977, Fabien Plasson is a video director specialized in the field of performing arts (dance , music, etc).

During his studies at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (joined in 1995) Fabien discovered video art. He was trained by various video artists (Joel Bartoloméo Pascal Nottoli , Eric Duyckaerts , etc).
He first experimented with the creation of installations and cinematic objects.

From 2001 to 2011, he was in charge of Ginger & Fred video Bar’s programming at La Maison de la Danse in Lyon. He discovered the choreographic field and the importance of this medium in the dissemination, mediation and pedagogical approach to dance alongside Charles Picq, who was a brilliant video director and the director of the video department at that time.

Today, Fabien Plasson is the video director at La Maison de la Danse and in charge of the video section of Numeridanse.tv, an online international  video library, and continues his creative activities, making videos of concerts, performances and also creating video sets for live performances.

Sources: Maison de la Danse ; Fabien Plasson website

More information: fabione.fr

 In June 2009, Mourad Merzouki was appointed director of the CCN de   Créteil and Val-de-Marne (National Choreography Centre), where he has   developed his vision of dance as “an open window on the world”. Since   the creation of the Käfig Company in 1996, the choreographer has been able to expand the language of hip-hop by working at where multiple   disciplines intersect: circus, martial arts, contemporary dance and   more. His pieces are currently touring the world. Supported by the State and local authorities, the Centres chorégraphiques nationaux (CCN) promote the development of dance, both through the creative impulse of their directors-choreographers, but also by supporting choreographic artists of various styles, by presenting works and by raising public awareness of the art of dance.

Today there are 19 Centres chorégraphiques nationaux. The CCN de Créteil is one of the first to have been created, by Maguy Marin. Three of them are now run by hip-hop choreographers, in Créteil (Mourad Merzouki), La Rochelle (Kader Attou) and Rennes (FAIR-E collective).

Mourad Merzouki has been at the head of the Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne / Compagnie Käfig since 2009. He is developing an artistic project that is both open to the world and rooted in the territory, transcending aesthetic, cultural and social boundaries. Tours, workshops, residencies, the Kalypso festival : there are many opportunities to discover and celebrate hip-hop dance, an art form that has become, in over 30 years, a strong marker of the cultural identity of our heritage.