Sylphides
2017 - Director : Centre national de la danse, Réalisation
Choreographer(s) : Bengolea, Cecilia (Argentina) Chaignaud, François (France)
Present in collection(s): Centre national de la danse , CN D - Spectacles et performances
Video producer : Centre national de la danse
Integral video available at CND de Pantin
Sylphides
2017 - Director : Centre national de la danse, Réalisation
Choreographer(s) : Bengolea, Cecilia (Argentina) Chaignaud, François (France)
Present in collection(s): Centre national de la danse , CN D - Spectacles et performances
Video producer : Centre national de la danse
Integral video available at CND de Pantin
Sylphides
The Sylphides (Sylphs) are mythical creatures, symbols of beauty, intermediaries between the living and the dead whose diaphanous appearance has been a source of fascination to writers and choreographers, inspiring several ballets, including the one by Michel Fokine danced by Vaslav Nijinsky. This source serves to both dress up bodies and to make a radical break with its classical point of reference. Indeed, like Pâquerette, Sylphides is above all a choreography of the possibility of movement – of its revelation, its advent. A choreography in which movement is not a given but the result of a journey, an experience that gives rise to a new organism, new possibilities of inhabiting it and making it move. The metaphorical power of this work no doubt stems from the paradoxes that it reveals with regard to the very idea of dance: sealed in black latex sacks, where moving and breathing are restricted to a vital minimum, the performers display vulnerable, lethargic bodies; all that remains visible is the rhythmic breathing that shapes the latex like a second skin. Pure sculptural images, vitrified vanities in a sort of fictional eternity, they become surfaces upon which various images are projected: mortury mask, futuristic mummies evoking interstellar travellers, as well as a strange sado-masochistic ceremony.
The process to which they subject their bodies with their hypnotic plasticity symbolises a sloughing, a transmutation that is both physical and metaphysical. A ceremony of passage and parable of renewal, from inertia to movement, Sylphides marks a threshold in the work of Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud: a zone of transit towards another form of dance, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.
Bengolea, Cecilia
Born in Buenos-Aires, Cecilia Bengolea studied urban dance forms, before to pursue studies in anthropological dances with Eugenio Barba, as well as Philosophy and Art History at the University of Buenos Aires. In 2001, she moved to Paris and followed the training Ex.e.r.c.e. directed by Mathilde Monnier in Montpellier.
In dialogue with Levi Strauss’s œuvre Tristes tropiques, Cecilia Bengolea co-directed two videos in 2011: La Beauté (tôt) vouée à se défaire with Donatien Veisman and Cri de Pilaga with Juliette Bineau. As a dancer, choreographer and performance artist, Cecilia Bengolea perceives dance and performance as ‘animated sculpture’ and welcomes the fact that these forms allow her to become both ‘object and subject at the same time’.
In 2016, Bengolea was commissioned by the ICA for London Art Night 2016 to present a video installation into holographic mirrors at Covent Garden Market and perform an outdoor participatory dancehall practice in the historical West Piazza of Covent Garden with ballerina Erika Miyauichi and dancehall artist Damion BG Dancerz. Bengolea also works with artists Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Monika Gintersdorfer, Knut Klassen as well as Jamaican Dancehall artists such as Joan Mendy and Damion BG dancerz. In collaboration with Jeremy Deller (UK), she co-directed the film RythmAssPoetry (rap) commissioned by the Biennale de Lyon 2015. Their second film, Bombom’s Dream, shot in Jamaica in 2016, commissioned by Hayward Gallery London and Sao Paulo Biennial 2016.
Source: The company Vlovajob Pru 's website
More information
Chaignaud, François
After graduating in 2003 from the CNSMD of Paris, François Chaignaud has collaborated with numerous choreographers (Alain Buffard, Boris Charmatz, Emmanuelle Huynh, Gilles Jobin). Since the creation of his first piece in 2004, he has taken up a multiplicity of roles as dancer, choreographer, singer, actor, historian, and cabaret artist. His work—which weaves the aspiration for dance of a comprehensive expression delving into the porosity and potential of bodies—is early on characterized by the singing and dance articulation (Думи мої, 2013). Degreed in history, he nourishes his art with in-depth research. The historical depth reflects in his own pieces as well as in the numerous collaborations he has done, and continues to do, including with cabaret artist Jérôme Marin (Sous l’ombrelle, 2011), Marie Caroline Hominal (Duchesses, 2009), and visual artist Théo Mercier (Radio Vinci Park, 2016). Between 2005 and 2016, Chaignaud creates with Cecilia Bangolea a series of noteworthy shows that are showed worldwide, including Pâquerettes (2005–2008), Sylphides (2009), (M)IMOSA (co-written with and performed with Trajal Harrell and Marlene Monteiro Freitas, 2011), Dub Love (2013), and DFS (2016). In 2021, he founds the organization mandorle productions, which supports his desire to follow a line of artistic creation marked by numerous collaborations. With Nina Laisné, he creates Romances inciertos, un autre Orlando (2017). The piece is presented at the 72nd edition of the Festival d’Avignon and brings together signing and dance around androgynous figures drawn from Spanish Baroque folklore. They are currently conducting research around partner dances in South America.
More information : https://mandorleproductions.fr
Centre national de la danse, Réalisation
Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).
Vlovajobpru
Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud have been collaborating since 2005. Together, they created Pâquerette (2005-2008), Sylphides (2009), Castor et Pollux (2010), Danses Libres (2010), (M)IMOSA (with Trajal Harrell and Marlene Monteiro Freitas, 2011), altered natives’ Say Yes To Another Excess –TWERK (2012), Dub Love (2013), DFS (2016). In 2014, the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon commissioned them to create a ballet for seven dancers on pointe shoes, set to Toru Takemitsu music composition How slow the wind. In 2015, Bengolea and Chaignaud were commissioned by the Ballet de Lorraine to produce a new work set to Devoted, a music by Philip Glass. On the same year, they premiered a new piece, entitled The Lighters’ Dancehall Polyphony for Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal. The performance Sylphides, written for vacuumed bodies in latex fetish envelopes won the Award de la Critique de Paris in 2009 and the Young Artist Prize at Gwangju Biennial, Korea in 2014. Over the past few years, they have presented work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Kitchen in New York, Tokyos Spiral in Japan, the Biennale de la danse de Lyon, at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, the Faena Art Center in Buenos Aires, of fig-2 at ICA, London, at the Festival d’Avignon, the Festival d’Automne à Paris, Montpellier Danse, ImpulsTanz in Vienna, deSingel in Antwerp, the Teatro de la Ribera in Buenos Aires, at the Panorama Festival of Rio de Janeiro, at the Centre National de la danse in Pantin, SESC in Sao Paulo and most recently at Kyoto Experiment, the Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival in October 2018.
Source: Company's website
En savoir plus : vlovajobpru.com
Sylphides
Artistic direction / Conception : Cecilia Bengolea et François Chaignaud
Interpretation : François Chaignaud, Erika Miyauchi, Elisa Yvelin et Valeria Lanzara
Artistic consultancy / Dramaturgy : Berno Odo Polzer
Lights : Erik Houllier
Costumes : Sothean Nhieim
Duration : 48 minutes
Vlovajobpru company
40 years of dance and music
The “Nouvelle Danse Française” of the 1980s
In France, at the beginning of the 1980s, a generation of young people took possession of the dancing body to sketch out their unique take on the world.
When reality breaks in
Dance and performance
Here is a sample of extracts illustrating burlesque figures in Performances.
The BNP Paribas Foundation
Pantomimes
Presentation of Pantomimes in the different types of dance.
Dance and visual arts
Dance and visual arts have often been inspiring for each other and have influenced each other. This Parcours can not address all the forms of their relations; he only tries to show the importance of plastic creation in some choreographies.
A Numeridanse Story
La part des femmes, une traversée numérique
A Rite of Passage
Write the movement
Why do I dance ?
Käfig, portrait of a company
Artistic Collaborations
Panorama of different artistic collaborations, from « couples » of choreographers to creations involving musicians or plasticians
Hip hop / Influences
This Course introduce to what seems to be Hip Hop’s roots.
Scenic space
A dance performance takes place in a defined spatial area ... or not. This course helps to understand the occupation of the stage space in dance.