This documentary explores the process led by choreographer Ambra Senatore and with the dancers who accompany her in the creation of the performance In Comune. It reveals a group functioning with love and generosity, where each dancer, through exchanges and improvisations, brings out their individuality. Between choreographic research and reflections on the collective, human beings, and other living entities, this performance is driven and inspired by human interactions, and this film captures its profound essence.

 On the stage, twelve men and women. Enough for a tiny community, always in movement. For her newest creation, Ambra Senatore wanted to create a group, to question the relationships between individuals, with performers from even more diverse backgrounds than she’s used to. Together they explore the space and their relationships to ask the quintessential questions of our time as they move across the stage: what does constitute each person ? what do we bring to the encounter with the other? How can the collective support us, enhance us, or also inhibit us? What strength can arise from being together?

The choreographer intends to create a “polis” (Greek for “city”), in other words to build a micro-society and articulate its capacity to welcome, or not, individuals. This is a negotiation about the sharing of the space, and the choreography plays with its inherent tensions, twists, and repetitions. It once again brings to the fore the artistry of Ambra Senatore’s choreographic composition, with the absurd as the ever-present subtle filter in her dance, made of breaks in rhythm and unexpected connections.

Composer Jonathan Seilman, with whom she’s worked since 2016, created a bespoke score to explore this music which speaks of what makes us, what flows through our cultural and collective memories… Always moving and fleeting, the light also plays a crucial part, drawing attention to scenes, objects, details, and directing the gaze of the spectator by offering him to look at what is highlighted, but also at what is left in the dark, what is not brought to the fore, what is perhaps hidden, so that he can choose what to look at.

Choreographer and performer Ambra Senatore was born in Turin in 1976.

She trained with various choreographers, and moved on to work with Jean-Claude Gallotta, Giorgio Rossi, Raffaella Giordano, Georges Lavaudant (Théâtre de l’Odéon, Paris), Roberto Castello, and Antonio Tagliarini. 

Since 1998, parallel to her work as a performer, she began to create performances in collaboration with other authors, for instance Reminda-remoda, Un po’io un po’tu (1999), and  Silenzio (2002). 

Following her doctorate in contemporary dance (2004), she taught history of dance at the University of Milan and wrote a book on italian contemporary dance (published UTET, Torino, 2007).

From 2004 to 2009, Ambra Senatore pursued choreographic research on solos which she performed: EDA-solo, Merce, Informazioni Utili, Altro piccolo progetto domestico, Maglie.  It was now that her work began to be regularly broadcast in France, most notably at the Hivernales d’Avignon.

Thereafter she would create group pieces: Passo (2010), A Posto (2011) and John (2012).  In 2012, she founded the EDA Company based in Besançon.  In 2013, she choreographed and directed Nos amours bêtes, a show for young people based on the text by Fabrice Melquiot. Her latest creations are Aringa Rossa (2014), the solo In Piccolo (2014), and the series of performances entitled Petites Briques (2015).

Between dance, theatre, and visual art, her work explores the boundaries between fiction and reality; what belongs to the performance and what lies outside of it.  Ambra Senatore works on the dynamic of danced movement, enriched by elements of theatricality and everyday actions and gestures, by exploring the construction of a dramaturgy which looks at the action and presence of the body.

Since the 1st January 2016 Ambra Senatore has been the new director of the NCCN: The National Choreographic Centre of Nantes. 

Source : CCNN

François Gauducheau was born in Nantes. After studying Letters and spending a year as an aid worker in Africa, he moved to Paris and began documentary production at ORTF. From 1970 to 1980, he produced a number of films, including for the show “Le Jour du Seigneur": France, Africa, India, Asia: the subjects are varied with strong social and human accents. At the start of the 80s, he joined the company Vidéo 44, which produces numerous institutional films, mainly for local communities. A few years later, he created GF. Production, his own company that enables him to both direct and to explore the world of documentaries once again. In 1997, he created the Association des Producteurs Audiovisuels de Pays de la Loire and sold his company to the group Her-bak. Since then, François Gauducheau has produced numerous documentaries for television. He works with regional production companies: Pois-chiche films, 24 Images, Odysséus Productions, Plan Large, Aligal, Aber images, etc. In 2008, with a few close friends he created a non-profit company, Primavista, which does testing, recording of artistic performances and short films with its own recording and editing equipment. Since July 2010, he has been a member of the board of directors of Association Télénantes, which develops future local Nantes television programming for presentation to the CSA (Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel).

Source : François Gauducheau 's website

More information :

francoisgauducheau.fr

Ambra Senatore, Italian choreographer, has set down at the Center Chorégraphique National de Nantes since January 1, 2016 after years of artistic and geographic travel, which have fueled his work. She, who has made humans her privileged creative soil, imagined a lively and vibrant place in which everyone can find a place: artists of course, but also residents, amateurs, partners of Nantes. A place full of creativity and openness, like an invitation to a journey to invent and share, together.

Source: CCNN
More information: ccnnantes.fr