The project, Combat de Carnaval et Carême is based on a writing process that I've been using for several years now. The idea is to initiate dance through concrete actions that, depending on the way they are performed, their quality, rhythm, space, and sequencing speed, take on a more or less narrative, expressionist, plastic or abstract quality.

Dance being the movement that links one posture to another, it is possible to write movement from a collection of borrowed gestures, whether they are gestures from everyday life or work, or more specific iconography: pictorial, photographic, cinematographic...

Between two forms, movement unfolds, so it's simply a matter of organising their succession.

It was from this idea that I created the Foulesproject: an audio score communicated via smartphones to around a hundred amateurs who performed to it in real time.

This experience enabled me to verify the richness of this compositional process and the singularity of the dance it produces, since memory does not interfere, leaving room for the immediacy of interpretation.

After this work, intended for amateurs, I wanted to repeat the experience with professional dancers who are capable of appropriating the movement and infusing it with their own choreographic knowledge. This became the project Combat de Carnaval et Carême.

Olivia Grandville

Trained first in ballet, Olivia Grandville resigned from the Paris Opéra Ballet to join the Compagnie Bagouet in 1988. For more than twenty years she has developed her own work, most focusing on the question of language and phrasing, be it musical, verbal or choreographic.

In 2010, she created Une semaine d’art en Avignon (A week of Art in Avignon) with Léone Nogarède and Catherine Legrand, under the auspices of the Sujets à Vif section of the Avignon Festival, then Le Cabaret discrépant, the result of research carried out on lettrist choreographic scores, created and presented at the 2011 Avignon Festival and then at the Théâtre de la Colline in Paris. During the 2013  2014 season, she created a number of solos: L’invité mystère (The mystery guest) based on a text by Grégoire Bouiller; Le Grand Jeu, a solo described as «under the influence»; and Toute ressemblance ou similitude (Any resemblance or similarity) based on a text by Aurore Jacob. She then created a number of larger scale works, notably Foules (Crowds), a creation for 100 amateur dancers, in 2015, prefiguring her next work, Combat de Carnaval (Carnival Combat) and Carême (Lent) for 10 dancers. She has been an Associated Artist at the Lieu unique since 2017, where she created A l’Ouest (In the west) in May 2018, channeling her own study trip to Canada and the USA to research First Nations dances.

Grandville is also a dancer and improvisation specialist and is regularly invited to work on the implementation of projects, notably by the choreographer Boris Charmatz (Roman-Photo, Levée des conflits, 20 danseurs pour le 20èmesiècle) and César Vayssié (Coproud)…

Jeanne Brouaye is a French artist who lives between Paris, Lyon and Brussels. Trained at ENSATT after her studies in literature, she works at first her profession as an actress with Christian Schiaretti in the TNP troupe, which she left after five years. Her assiduous practice of contemporary dance makes the body a stone angular in her approach to the stage and the choreographic writing attracts him. In 2011 she left for New York to train at the View Point and created in the wake of this, his first piece at the Off de la danse biennial in Lyon. Then a series of new collaborations began: Constanza Macras (Argentina) as part of the New School of Masters, Pietro Marullo, (Belgium), Agnieszka Ryskiewicz, (France) , Baptiste Tanné for the folk/rock music project Electric blue girl in which she composes and performes, Robin Renucci (Tréteaux de France) and finally Olivia Grandville of which she became the accomplice on Combat de Carnaval et Carême and Foules.

 César Vayssié produces films and performances. At the intersection of visual arts and dance, his work sidesteps all classification. His  artist status is emblematic of a work permanently trying to find  itself, starting from intra and extra cinematographic influences. After graduating from Beaux-Arts (art school), he joined the Académie de France-Villa Medici in Rome as a filmmaker. Alongside UFE(UNFILMÉVÈNEMENT),  he created UFE performance at MuCEM - Actoral 15. During FIAC 2016 in  Paris Vayssié premiered his piece COPROUDUCTION a series of improvised  duets with experienced performers.

Source :  César Vayssié

More information :
https://www.cesarvayssie.com/

Mille Plateaux has been home to artist and choreographer Olivia Grandville's project since January 2022. Mille Plateaux aims to be a space for creation, experimentation and artistic innovation; it wishes to reflect the vitality and diversity of the contemporary scene, and to be a home for choreographic cultures in the broadest sense. The National Choreographic Centres are major players in the vitality and structuring of choreographic creation in France and constitute one of the labels of the French Ministry of Culture.