French Choreographer Research Articles

Social Choreography as a Cultural Commoning Practice: Becoming Part of Urban Transformation in Une danse ancienne

This article examines social choreography as a cultural commoning practice that is embedded within a relational structure between different institutions, the people involved, and specific socio-cultural contexts. The artistic research project Une danse ancienne by French choreographer Rémy Héritier and their team is presented as a case study of this practice. This collaborative choreography is based on a dance performance and social gathering that is reactivated every year by the same dancer in the same peri-urban site in a metropolitan area of Lausanne, Switzerland. Une danse ancienne holds strong relationships to temporalities, to the changing urban space, and to communal processes of documentation. Its relational choreographic structure and sharing practices are analyzed against the concepts of ‘expanded choreography’ and ‘cultural commoning’. This article, therefore, discusses social choreography as a cultural commoning practice that involves interactions with different social groups and institutions and practices of sharing and communal documentation. This article shows how, as social choreography, Une danse ancienne reflects upon urban transformation through cultural commoning practices.

Ballet “Seasons” (1900) as an example of Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov’s symphonic work.

The article deals with Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov’s ballet “The Seasons” as an example of the composer’s symphonic work. “The Seasons” is a one-act ballet written by Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov and commissioned by the Directorate of the Imperial Theaters for the newly opened Hermitage Theater. The premiere took place on February 7, 1900. The idea of the ballet “Les saisons” (The Seasons) belonged to Ivan Vsevolozhsky. The scriptwriter and choreographer was a famous French choreographer Marius Ivanovich Petipa (1818-1910). The article indicates various opinions of critics and musicologists about Glazunov’s ballet, such as M.A. Ganina, B.V. Asafiev, as well as the statements of other composers: P.I. Tchaikovsky, N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov. Indeed, the ballet “The Seasons” is one of the composer’s brightest which worthy of its place in the repertoire of many theaters. At present, the music for the ballet is more often performed in concert rather than choreographed.

The interpretative function of singing in the “score” of a modern ballet performance

Statement of the problem. Under consideration is a specific form of art synthesis – singing in modern ballet. The synthesis of arts is attributive to the poetics of European opera, where a choreographic plan is used, however, singing in ballet is a rather rare phenomenon against the background of the dominance of singing in the operas of the 18th and 19th centuries. Nonetheless, there are eloquent examples of the return of singing in a ballet as a characteristic feature of the innovative choreographic theatre (“Pulcinella” by I. Stravinsky). The relevance of the topic is explained by the lack of musicological research devoted to the functions of singing as a component of ballet, while in modern practice there are clear precedents for the revival of this phenomenon. Some topical sources indicate the synthetic type of theatrical spectacle in the context of French Baroque culture (Danshina, 2010; Anfilova, 2004; Chepalov, 2008 and others), but the vocal component is not considered as a special problem. The purpose of the article is to investigate the interaction of vocal and ballet arts in the modern practice of ballet productions of the Kharkiv Opera and Ballet Theater (Ukraine) in the retrospective context of European musical-theatrical traditions. Modern ballet “The Little Prince” based on A. Saint-Exupery’s novel of the same name (2016) staged by Kharkiv ‘M. Lysenko’ National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (KhNATOB) was chosen to be the material of the article. The following research methods are used: historical and typological approach that distinguishes the styles of European opera culture; semantic analysis of ballet performance as an artistic text; interpretative-cognitive comprehension of singing and its functions in ballet dramaturgy. Presentation of the research results. The creative experience of the French choreographer Johann Nuss on the stage of Kharkiv Opera Theatre – the premiere of the modern ballet “The Little Prince”, testified to the actualization of intertextuality in solving the problem of the relationship between singing and dancing. Traditional artistic plans are an important factor in the dramaturgy of a ballet performance. Together with two purely choreographic levels where the virtuoso skill of dancers and plastique of “talking” movements prevails, the singing voice is the third plan, which indicates the continuity of the French tradition (one can remember the model of J. B. Rameau’s “Gallant India”). The choice of musical material for the performance belongs to J. Nuss. He “saw” the image of Rose, who the Prince is in love with, twofold: as a choreographic-plastic and a “singing” one. Respectively, the role of Rose is embodied by a ballerina (Honoured Artist of Ukraine Iryna Khandazhevska) and a singer (Honoured Artist of Ukraine Olena Starykova, soprano). Dressed in a costume of a flower, the singer represents an ideal creature: themes from R. Glier’s and S. Rachmaninoff’s vocal compositions sound. The appearance of other bright characters is accompanied by instrumental music fragments, these are the King (J. S. Bach’s Second Orchestral Suite), the Ambitious Man (L. Delibes “Coppélia”), the Drunkard (“Winter” from A. Vivaldi’s “The Seasons”), and the Banker (J. S. Bach’s Suite for Cello Solo). So, the introduction of coloratura singing into the spectator’s plan of perception of the expressive-linguistic means of ballet opens a new symbolic world. Conclusions. Singing in a ballet is a specific manifestation of the art synthesis characteristic of modern choreographic performance. The vocal art emphasizes the highest, spiritual degree of communication, adding to the spectators’ experience a cathartic component. The interpretative function of singing in the concept of the performance is obvious: singing is a symbol (expression) of the divine essence of a human. Energy of vocals, multiplied by the traditional means of classical choreography and modern ballet, is a component of “multimedia modality” (Petrovic, 2017) as a sign of the interpretive thinking of the directors. Understanding the action of multimodality in the space-time of ballet is an interpretative dimension of spiritual reality. The prospect of researching. The study of modern forms of stage life of “singing in a ballet” indicates the need to develop this concept in the theoretical and methodological key, as well as to consider other examples of ballet performances (“One Thousand and One Nights” by F. Amirov, “Spartacus” by A. Khachaturian in Kharkiv Opera and others).

Xavier Le Roy and body identity as a product of circumstances

The paper addresses the performance Product of Circumstances (1999) by Xavier Le Roy, highlighting the particular corporeality that it conveys, promotes and theorizes. The work of the French choreographer is approached from an epistemological perspective and related to the “constructivist” corporeal episteme promoted by a part of contemporary dance. In conclusion, the article questions how revolutionary or not are the premises of Le Roy’s non-dance compared to the production system of contemporary dance.

A OBRA COREOGRÁFICA COMO EXPERIÊNCIA POÉTICA E EDUCATIVA: UMA ABORDAGEM FENOMENOLÓGICA

Abstract: We present the comprehension of the choreographic piece as a poetic and educational experience, considering the presence of the body as body schema on the production of language, knowledge, and the presence of the education as inter corporeity. It is phenomenological research, based on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, in a dialogue with the history of art and Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne method. The corpus of research analysis was intentionally constituted from pieces of the French choreographer Jérôme Bel, highlighting in this article the piece Gala (2015). Besides the referred piece, we also ponder over the lived experiences with the UFRN Dance Group; with the students of Physical Education degree course/UFRN curricular component Body Awareness; and with the students of Dance degree course/UFRN curricular component Dance Technique and Aesthetics. From the phenomenological reduction process, we realized that the choreographic piece, as a poetic and educational experience, broadens our sensibility, and our capacity to know, interpret, and create sensible and intelligible relationships with the world of culture, art, and education. Furthermore, it educates us in the understanding of language as an unfolding of perceptive life, involving historicity, contingency, sensitivity, and affections. It is also worth mentioning the creation of senses in an intersubjective way as a fundamental element in the education process, and we ponder over education as intercorporeity, since there is in the other what is lacking in that one so that can put into perspective senses that were unthinkable until then.

The Activities of the French Choreographer J.-B. Lande in Russia in the 1730s

The Activities of the French Choreographer J.-B. Lande in Russia in the 1730s

Intra-acting fat suits, tutu flesh, and sweaty skins: material-semiotic clashes in Maguy Marin’s Ballet Groosland

Costumes perform; they affect those wearing them and embody different cultural, historical, and material resonances that viewers interpret. One particular type of costuming has consistently provoked scholars: the fat suit. Compared to both blackface and drag, scholars have analyzed the fat suit’s problematic and radical nature. This article considers the fat suit’s dynamics within ballet by looking closely at French choreographer Maguy Marin’s Groosland. Premiered in 1989, Groosland continues to tour internationally, and like many of Marin’s works, presents overt social commentary. With a new materialist philosophical framework, I analyze Groosland’s material and discursive aspects and apply feminist philosopher Karen Barad’s concept of intra-activity to unpack their relationship to one another. I argue the ballet’s costume-dancer and costume-choreography intra-actions generate both subversive choreographic tactics and fatphobic stereotypes. Furthermore, in reflecting upon skin studies scholarship, I claim Groosland’s fat suits ignite an uncanny sensation by resembling human skin. This, matched with doll-like choreography, provides a posthuman revelation that exposes human objectness and, therefore, challenges perceived divides between nonhuman and human. Studying Groosland prompts larger questions surrounding the cultural construction of working-class bodies, fat bodies, and ballet bodies and ultimately demonstrates what one can uncover in considering fat suits as agential matter.

Danza e museo in osmosi

In 2017, the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato presented an exhi- bition, curated by Antonia Alampi, on the French choreographer Jérôme Bel. The exhibition allows to deal with some of the issues concerning the osmosis processes currently underway between dance and museums, where dance is now considered a stable presence within the cultural offer for the public. The relationship between these two worlds, which has increased in the last twenty years and has developed consider- ably thanks to projects such as Boris Charmatz’s Musée de la danse, opens up fundamental questions concerning the creative processes and programming of dance, the status of museums, but also the new methods of choreographic practice and use of art.

A Pas De Deux for a Cathedral and a Hunchback: Roland Petit’s Ballet Notre-Dame De Paris

Abstract In 1965, the French choreographer Roland Petit set himself the task of making a ballet out of Victor Hugo’s voluminous novel Notre-Dame de Paris. The result departed radically from earlier attempts to transpose the work into movement by choreographers who included Jules Perrot and Marius Petipa. Although the love plot (which revolves around a dancer), the wide range of emotions depicted, the stark contrasts, and alternation between crowd scenes and more intimate scenes favour its transposition into a ballet, the novel also presents numerous difficulties, such as the importance of politics, philosophy and architecture. Quasimodo, Frollo and the cathedral seem rather unsuitable protagonists for a ballet. This paper argues that Petit’s adaptation of Notre-Dame de Paris engaged with the literary source on a much deeper level than its predecessors. Petit’s innovative ballet does not merely illustrate the novel: it reveals underlying elements in the source and sheds new light on it.

“Ich Bin Ein Schauspieler”: Making Crip Performance in Toronto with Theater HORA’s Disabled Theater

This paper attends to the making of crip performance in the 2015 production of Disabled Theater in Toronto, where eleven performers with intellectual and physical disabilities took to the stage to perform a series of dance solos set to popular music. The performance was directed by the French choreographer Jérôme Bel and produced by the Zurich-based Theater HORA, a professional theatre company that is fully comprised of performers with disabilities. As an experienced choreographer, Bel is portrayed in the performance program as the “brains” behind Disabled Theater. It seems as though the performers were simply executing Bel’s artistic ideas through the embodied materiality of their dance performances. As such, the performers’ desire to be seen as proper artists exists amid the specter of an ableist ideology in “normative” culture that could potentially influence the audience members’ interpretation of their dance solos. Drawing on the work of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Carrie Sandahl, and Robert McRuer on the intersection of disability and performance, as well as the Italian dramaturge Eugenio Barba’s concept of the “pre-expressive state” of the actor’s body, I argue that the inclusion of persons with disabilities who confidently describe themselves as “actors” through the German phrase, “Ich Bin Ein Schauspieler”, unfolds the possibility of crip performance in Disabled Theater, which, unlike an ableist conception of performance, acknowledges disability as a reality that is constitutive of everyday life. Through crip performance, persons with disabilities do not need to downplay their disability in order to be publicly acknowledged as artists.

Synchronization, Attention and Transformation: Multidimensional Exploration of the Aesthetic Experience of Contemporary Dance Spectators.

The co-presence of bodies in intersubjective situations can give rise to processes of kinesthetic empathy and physiological synchronization, especially in the context of dance: the body and attention of the spectators are oriented towards the dancers. In this study, we investigate the processes of “body-mind” resonance between a choreography and its spectators, and more specifically the lasting impact of this resonance post-performance. We then explore the relation between the observed effects and subjective measures of attention. The study focuses on the work of the French choreographer Myriam Gourfink, who develops a unique movement, based on the slower breathing of dancers: the breathing generates an extremely slow movement without rhythmic ruptures. Phenomenological studies of her work report changes in temporal perception and changes in bodily attentional states. We made use of two cognitive tasks in order to quantify this change in temporal perception: Spontaneous Motor Tempo (SMT) and Apparent Motion effect (AM) before and after a 40-min live performance. Subjective reports were collected at the end of the performance. Physiological data were recorded before and after the performance. We performed a control experiment with a choreography of a distinctly different quality of movement. Post-Gourfink performance, we observed a significant deceleration of SMT and a decrease in its variability, while AM was reported with longer temporal intervals. Neither of these effects was observed in the control condition. Furthermore, an increase in perception of AM was correlated with a slower breathing rate after the performance. Correlations with subjective reports suggest a link between changes in cognitive and physiological dynamics and the degree of absorption of the spectators in the performance. In addition, these changes were related to specific reported attentional dispositions that we interpret as a form of attentional resonance. The ensemble of the results suggests an expansion of the “specious present” that is related to the slowing of physiological rhythms, and an attentional resonance between spectators and the choreography. The intricate relation we observed between inter-personal resonance and temporal cognition, foregrounds the notion of shared present as a neurophenomenological construct.

Angelin Preljocaj's Empty Moves (2014) and Transmodern Dance History

ABSTRACTIn this article, I examine the choreographic practices associated with French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj and his work, Empty Moves (Parts I, II & III), a three-part work informed by artistic hybridity and alterity. Through choreographic examples from Empty Moves, I examine the nascent state of transmodernism in dance, an artistic condition that implies a web of complex connections and interactions among dance histories and choreographic practices. In rethinking postmodern dance histories in the wake of recent theories of transmodernism, I conclude by offering a new framework for a dance paradigm and a reconsideration of selected canons of dance histories.

A Mobile Social Realm: Labour, Sovereignty, and Subjecthood in Disabled Theater/Affordance Creations of Disability Performance: Limits of a Disabled Theater

To be read alongside Arseli Dokumaci’s contribution to this issue, Katherine Zien’s article treats questions of ethics, affect, labor, and autonomy in Disabled Theater (DT), a performance created by Swiss performing company Theatre HORA and French choreographer Jérôme Bel. DT evinces traits of the artistic production of both contributors, yet HORA has made the piece its own by touring it around the world, for over 100 performances since its premiere in 2012. For better or worse, DT has become a signature piece for HORA and, in Zien’s terms, a “mobile social realm” offering a space where members of HORA can experiment with new ways of living and working together. The ethical and social dimensions of DT – and company members’ responses to them – have conditioned HORA’s expanded investigation of aesthetic and political control and collaboration that performance scholar Yvonne Schmidt examines in later productions. In addition to providing room for political and aesthetic exploration, DT’s mobile social realm can impact the communities in which it is performed. While this effect may not always be feasible in a festival setting, conditions at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada were such that when HORA performed there on March 30-31, 2015, questions of disability, autonomy, and access to the city rose forcefully to the fore. Reflecting on her feelings of productive discomfort around the 2015 performance, Zien seeks a response to DT’s fractured reception in a melange of concrete poetry and prose.

Hidden Creators, Silent Authors

To be interpreter and at the same time creator seems to be the rule in contemporary dance. It is expected of the dancer to contribute to the making of the piece in which he will appear. Similarly, the choreographer's assistant (also referred as rehearsal assistant) has an active role in the process of creating a dance piece. This paper proposes an analysis of a creative process in which the question of authorship emerges—in our point of view—as the main issue. The onomastic pieces of French choreographer Jérôme Bel will serve as the basis of our analysis, and especially the piece called Isabel Torres, in which the interpreter and the choreographer's assistant had a much more important role in the creation than the choreographer himself. Premiered in 2005, Isabel Torres was supposed to be a Brazilian version of Véronique Doisneau (created in 2004, for the Paris Opera). The creative work made by the dancer and the rehearsal assistant made of it more than a mere version: Isabel Torres is an autonomous piece—so autonomous that Bel offered it to both dancer and assistant, to present it wherever they wished. Who signs Isabel Torres? In which terms is it presented in programs? Do dancer and assistant consider themselves as authors? How does the choreographer deal with it? The absence of the choreographer, the people involved in it, and the kind of work developed in the creative process makes us question the notion of authorship in contemporary dance pieces.

Dancing/Writing Transmodernism: Toward a Theorization of Recent Choreographic Histories

In this paper, I explore recent theoretical offerings on transmodernism in literature and critical studies and its appropriation and transference into the field of dance studies Through writing transmodernism in dance, I offer a model that is timely and necessary. This framework is articulated through historical trajectories focused on a case study, notably through the work of French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj. Drawing upon Annonçiation (1995), the concept of dancing /writing transmodernism reflects the epistemological values from the interstitial transference of composite/nonlinear/scaffolded texts, including the rethinking of the biblical narratives, musical textures, and corporeal/physical textures.

A tribute to the Other

Abstract Ninety-nine years after its scandalous premiere, Igor Stravinsky's 'Le Sacre du Printemps' has become a cultural monument with an important position in the collective memory. A new interpretation of the work by French choreographer Laurent Chétouane aims at putting the great myth into question. 'Sacrificing' the sacrifice itself, his choreography tries to rehabilitate the original strangeness of the piece. The dance is conceived as a tribute to the figure of the Other, which undermines the traditional regime of logos, reason and representation. By calling on affective techniques and a thinking of pathos and response, Chétouane continues his research of a theatre beyond images and concepts.

OCCUPY MoMA: The (Risks and) Potentials of a Musée de la danse!

By renaming the Choreographic National Center in Rennes and Bretagne as the Musée de la danse in 2009, the French choreographer Boris Charmatz has indirectly raised new questions on both museum and dance ontologies, opening up the possibility of an enriched interdisciplinary discourse on the relationship between movement-based arts and museums/art institutions. This essay explores the changing museum and dance landscape over the past few decades, considers how museums have been theorized, and their relationship to, and engagement with, audiences; and asks what role choreography and dance can play in this new institutional context.

Presence, Rhetoric, Difference: Jérôme Bel and Theater HORA’s Disabled Theater

A deceptively straightforward performance work created by French choreographer Jérôme Bel in collaboration with the company members of Zurich’s Theater HORA, Disabled Theater subtly challenges the normative conventions of theatrical spectatorship and hints at forms of sociality that can flourish beyond the margins of standard or typical cognition.

Towards a moister media, from Aquaponics to multi-scalar navigation

Abstract The aquatic, the virtual and the zero-gravity medium share some similarities in the way they are experienced by human beings. Present-day realities are uncertain and fluid. As the term ‘Aquaponics’ refers to agriculture and suggest a very static process, I would advance that the metaphors of travel and movement should be more appropriate to describe today’s challenges regarding the exploration and understanding of those medium. I have included in this article a personal interview with Dr Sarah Jane Pell, a researcher, Artist and professional diver, in order to gain some perspectives on the testimonies of Kitsou Dubois, a French Choreographer who conducted zero-gravity performances. Based on their statements, I give further in the text an insight on my personal practice of Aikido, a Japanese martial art and mind–body harmonization technique. Using references from popular Culture, my own experiences and the testimonies of Kitsou Dubois and Dr Sarah Jane Pell, as well as examples taken from ancestral spiritual traditions from around the world, I try to draw a map of contemporary and multi-scalar realities with a critical approach to the concept of aquaponics.

Drought and Rain: re-creations in Vietnamese, cross-border heritage

The Drought and Rain dance trilogy, by Vietnamese–French choreographer Ea Sola, evokes memory, history and everyday practices through song, stylised gesture and stark, graceful images. The performances aim not to represent ancient and wartime Vietnamese pasts as much as call attention to the ways in which the present and past invigorate and co-create each other. The unsettled, recursive and processual nature of Ea Sola’s performances suggest it is necessary to periodically re-encounter the continuing legacies of violence. The performances enact a different form of historical (re)productivity, not predicated on a linear materialism, but based on processes of temporal turn and re-turn. I employ the most recent performance in the series, Drought and Rain 2011, as both subject and lens for exploring the unfinished dynamics of memory–history, and as a site and practice of cultural heritage. Embodying a hybrid mix of multiple re-performance categories, the Drought and Rain performances stretch current notions of heritage and are cross-border in terms of culture, nationality, arts genre and aesthetics and political implication. Primary points of focus include: the non-originality of performance, the unfinished nature of the past, and the way in which the Drought and Rain performances propose a counter-memory of the future.