An extract remodelled by Évidanse (Limoges), artistic manager Catherine Mounet, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2016) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Created in 2013 in Limoges by Catherine Mounet, on completion of an amateur project led with the choreographer Hervé Koubi, this group consists of eight female dancers who attend the same contemporary dance class. Out of a variety of artistic projects, a collaboration with Sharon Fridman was particularly responsible for stimulating the young interpreters in their desire to take on creation and repertoire work. It was after the meeting with the choreographer Gisèle Gréau that the idea to discover the company Le Four Solaire, an historical facet of French contemporary dance, took root. 

The project
In 1980, when Anne-Marie Reynaud and Le Four Solaire collective staged Quai de l’arrivée, for five interpreters and a saxophonist, the aim was to narrate the story of “characters in distress on a railway station platform at dawn”. This mixing of dance and theatre at the heart of a visual universe that is “dark, strange and wacky in which the absurd assumes a dominant role” stimulated the group, happy to immerse itself in a creation marked by surrealism and under the influence of German Expressionism. The powerful idea to pay tribute to Anne-Marie Reynaud also spurred on the work. 

The choreographer
In 1976, the choreographer and pedagogue Anne-Marie Reynaud (1945-2009) founded, together with Odile Azagury, Le Four Solaire, a landmark company in the history of French dance, while also participating in 1974 in Carolyn Carlson’s GRTOP (Opéra de Paris Theatrical Research Group). Her shows, bubbling over with surrealist fantasy and finely balanced antics, were presented both in theatres and in the streets alfresco. Of a sharing and caring nature, she diversified her activities, nominated as director first of Îles de Danses in 1995 and then of the Training and Pedagogical department of the Centre national de la danse in Pantin in 1998. In 2005, she custom-designed for Pedro Pauwels the solo Pliages, which would be her last choreography. 

Anne-Marie Reynaud (1945-2009) began dancing at Irène Popard’s school, then with Martha Graham in London, then joined Catherine May Atlani’s Ballets de la Cité in 1973 and the GRTOP (Paris Opera theatrical research group) in 1974, where she performed Carolyn Carlson’s ballets. In 1976, she founded the Four Solaire with Odile Azagury. The Nevers-based company became a National Choreographic Centre in 1989. In 1995, she was in charge of programming for the Paris region’s Île de Danse Festival and, in 1998, she became responsible for pedagogy at the CND (National Centre for Dance) until 2009.

Source : Lise Brunel, Dictionnaire de la danse (dir. de Philippe Le Moal), Larousse, 2008

From live stage images to life in images, the  director and video artist Karim Zeriahen seems to have found the  shortest way. Since the beginning of the 90s, when he worked in close  relationship with choreographer Philippe Decouflé, he learned how to put  the art of stage in motion, contemporary dance most of the time. Karim  Zeriahen then starts a fruitful collaboration with Montpellier based  choreographer Mathilde Monnier. Stop, Videlilah, day of night, short  films adapted from her stage creations. Each time, Karim Zeriahen's   camera takes over the place with movement, the body language is not  frozen but magnified. Choreographer Herman Diephuis also joins this  gallery of dancing portraits. Documentaries on figures such like Albert  Maysles or Hubert de Givenchy and from Joe Dalessandro to Paul  Morrissey, he sets a signature, a camera always in action with  confidence.

Today the director goes further with a new  project and tracks the subtle movements of the body language beyond the  physical appearance. A collection of living portraits as unique pièces  reminding us of the master portraitists of renaissance. These living  natures consists in filming the subject in a certain amount of time,  almost still, with signs of respiration, eye blinks, as if it were  posing for a painting. They are then displayed on a flat screen with a  memory card. With this collection starting, Karim Zeriahen, with his  documentary and artist vision, interrogates himself about the virtual  world filled with images. By taking a pause, and his models with him, he  questions the way we look at things, the way we look at life.

Source: Philippe Noisette 

En savoir plus: www.karimzeriahen.com

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