“The oeuvre of Julius Eastman, a sadly forgotten  figure of American minimalism, transcends his rather tragic life story.  His music is minimal only as it concerns his writing process. Otherwise  it channels a strong rock n’ roll energy, in phase with his political  commitments as a black, gay musician, and in phase with his generation,  which dreamed of attaching collective ideologies to individual freedoms.

The piece Evil Nigger, here in a version for piano and  electric guitar performed by Melaine Dalibert and Manuel Adnot -- is  already its own manifesto. When asked about its shocking title, Eastman  went into a rant about personal commitment and the convergence of the  struggle.

This singular and collective characterization is the point of  departure for the 21 different pieces interpreted by the dancers. They  use and abuse their honed bodies, their knife-edged legs, a series of  haphazard pirouettes and grands jetés, piling up into absolute chaos and high‑flying energy, in a mix of trivial and virtuosic movements.

We need young people to rise up: this is the energy I want to use  here, echoing the formidable vitality in this composer’s music, in the  space he himself shows us, between “great” music and popular trends.”

Olivia Grandville

Source: Ballet de Lorraine

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)…

Bérangère Goossens is a  french filmmaker, born in 1979. She studied cinema at university of  Paris 8 and started directing documentaries.

Since acquiring the CCN title in 1999, the Centre Chorégraphique National - Ballet de Lorraine has dedicated itself to supporting contemporary choreographic creation. As of July 2011 the organization is under the general and artistic direction of Petter Jacobsson.
The CCN – Ballet de Lorraine and its company of 26 dancers is one of the most important companies working in Europe, performing contemporary creations while retaining and programming a rich and extensive repertory, spanning our modern history, made up of works by some of our generations most highly regarded choreographers.
The CCN functions as an art center and venue for multiple possibilities in the fields of research, experimentation and artistic creation. It is a platform open to many different disciplines, a space where the many visions of dance of today may meet. 

More information : http://ballet-de-lorraine.eu