PERFORMANCES & CREATORS TO WATCH features reviewed dance pieces, dance-performances and performances, along with short biographies of associated choreographers, performers and other actors. It complements the Paris Performance Calendar's AGENDA & PERFORMERS headings. It is regularly updated.
PERFORMANCES
MY SOUL IS MY VISA • Marco Berrettini • 70 min • MC93 – Nouvelle salle • Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales, May 2018 • Α My soul is my Visa plays on the spontaneity of live interaction among performers – piano player and dancer – within a “collectively-created” choreography and music ranging from Erik Satie to Nina Simone. Marco Berrettini cites Heracleitus – “Everything flows” and James Brown, “… Give me the fever in a cold sweat …”. Berrettini comes to contemporary dance by way of 80s disco dancing and Pina Bausch (whose claim to fame is to make a body do what it can do, not what it should do). From this, deduce that Berrettini’s reference to “soul” in the title most likely refers to the Motown musical exploration of the body-mind mix and the resting state of consciousness in quantum physics. “Visa” could be that gold plastic card that opens the mall doors from Ulan Bator to Tierra del Fuego, but expect otherwise. Ω Performers 16 & 17 May 2018, Montreuil : Nathalie Broizat, Sébastien Chatellier, Ruth Childs, Caroline Breton, Samuel Pajand / Scenography & lighting: Bruno Faucher / Costumes : Olivier Mulin / Production: *Melk Prod.
THE SEA WITHIN • premiere • Lisbeth Gruwez • 70 min • Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil • Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales, May 2018 • Α Lisbeth Gruwez imagines, then choreographs, then dances sensibilities (or sensibilities make Gruwez dance), whether Bob Dylan or an apocalyptic American preacher (It’s going to get worse and worse my friends). With The Sea Within she tries her hand at transmitting sensibilities through choreography and directorship and something exceptional happens: an alchemical transmutation of pulse, blood, mind, performance experience and personal intimacy makes Sound herself a performer in the piece. I mean this literally: my mind’s eye saw Sound as it saw the other performers. As Papuan English would rightly speak it, Sound byemby braid as the others braid her, she is byemby undone as the others are undone, byemby caresses, is caressed, byemby pursuing, byemby pursued and byemby becomes flesh like their flesh. This transmutation to Sound was amazing to me, the realization of the hope I always have in watching live performance, for me, the reason live performance persists and will persist. See : The Best American Poetry, 23 May 2018, "The Sea Within": riding a fine choreographic wavefront – with Sound, too. Ω Performers16 & 17 May 2018 Montreuil: Ariadna Gironès Mata, Charlotte Petersen, Cherish Menzo, Dani Escarleth Pozo, Francesca Chiodi Latini, Jennifer Dubreuil, Liadain Herriott, Natalia Pieczuro, Sarah Klenes, Sophia Mage, Wei-Wei Lee / Sound creation: Maarten Van Cauwenberghe, Elko Blijweert & Bjorn Eriksson / Lighting: Harry Cole / Scenography: Marie Szersnovicz / Costumes: Alexandra Sebbag / Production: Voetvolk vzw Voetvolk
ZAOUM • Cindy Van Acker • 65 min • MC93 – Nouvelle salle • Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales, June 2018 • Α Considered one of the moving spirits of transmuting the abstract into the concrete of dance performance, Zaoum, is a demonstration of Acker’s vision of dance as the force of possibility, liberation and life. From the Russian words “za” beyond and “oum” mind, “Zaoum” is the name given to Russian Futurist non-lexical “pure sound” poetry which van Acker turns into movement on stage to Quando stanno morendo. Diario polacco N. 2 (“While they die. Polish Diary”), composed in 1982 by Luigi Nono as a tribute to and remembrance of the Polish Solidarity worker’s movement (dissolved by a Soviet-inspired military coup d’état in 1981). Van Acker is really successful in setting mood or evoking vision by the play of choreography against set (Note the play of the austere abstraction of the set and the slow movement of the body – in a khaki green – in Lanx). From the beginning to end this piece is a powerful evocation of a sense of art that represents itself to me as Klimt and Kandinsky but also Russian constructivist artists such as Lyubov Popova or Alexander Rodchenko. Ω Performers 1 June 2018, MC93 Nouvelle Salle, Bobigny : / Scenography & set : Victor Roy / Reader : Elia Van Acker / Costumes : Kata Tóth, Ni Zhang / Lighting : Luc Gendroz / IT programming : Khalil Klouche / Musician : Samuel Pajand / Sound engineer : Denis Rollet / Production : Cie Greffe
ALEXANDRE • premiere • Paula Pi • 60 min • Centre national de la danse, Pantin • Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales, May 2018 • Α Pi has said that Alexandre “plays with the notion of translation, as a space between two languages, two lips, two banks, two "othernesses" … two bodies… two as in the founding myths about twins, two as in a duet, and, especially, two to look for the in-between.” Staged, the piece is about position and personal posture: Paula Pi performs alone in a space that is decentered by a lighting pylon that falls diagonally stage right, effectively pushing her, wherever she may actually be and whatever she may actually be doing, to center stage. As to posture, she dresses herself in androgynous khaki knee-length shorts and sky-blue polo-style shirt that one might find in a girl-kid’s cut-out book. Rather than smoothing out the gender-line of the body, the ill-fitting lack of cut advertises the individuality of the body beneath. The narrative of the piece, which begins with a call from the dark, response from the dark, followed by performer’s appearance on the set, is underlined and finally, overshadowed, by the visual pointing to self: low, break-dance style moves bring her always toward center stage. Ω Concept: Paula Pi, with Sorour Darabi / Performers: Paula Pi / Scenography & lighting / Florian Leduc / Costumes: Rachel Garcia / Sound: Neo Huelcker / Production: NO DRAMA, BureauProduire
FULL MOON • Cheng Tsung-lung • 30 min • 8 performers • Palais de Chaillot • Three Pieces from Sydney Dance Company, April 2018 • Α Full Moon is a masterpiece of professionalism: smooth unity of movement, sense, emotion that combines contemporary and classical dance styles and superb music and, since this is France and the Palais de Chaillot, superlative staging. On its own terms, Moon is a shorter, non-narrative, maybe conceptually-superior version of Midsummer Night’s Dream : a performance-spirit opens a potential where anything, all of it delicious, can happen. All Moon’s parts point toward the titular “full moon”, the full moon illuminates the mystery evoked in costume and set and mystery sweetens the choreographic of coupling. In fact, the mechanics are so perfect the piece seems more a tableau vivant more than dance. But Cheng doesn’t see it like this and neither do I. He comments in his note on Full Moon, “The light that animates modern cities fascinates me… and it occupies the spaces between what I see and what I feel… The moon clarifies what I see and helps me pierce the mysteries of the unconscious world.” So, like many modern dance pieces, Full Moon can be seen as a picture, a painting. The twist is that it’s a picture in the Chinese tradition, a conventional image perfected by the skill, thought and emotion of the choreographer-painter. Unlike a tableau vivant, it’s not showing you something “new” (that you’ve never seen before) but rather pointing you what is already there (that you’ve never seen before). Ω Composer: Lim Giong / Lighting: Damien Cooper / Costumes: Fan Huaichih
SPONGE • Yu-Ju Lin • 25 min • Le Colombier, Bagnolet • Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales May 2018 • Α Yu-Ju Lin’s intriguing ballet is about her experience of learning. To describe it she uses the image of a sponge that “absorbs and then discharges, absorbs and discharges” and sees in it both the process of osmosis and the capacity for assimilating learning. Yu-Ju Lin is an alumnus of the Cloud Gate 2 Dance Theater ( 雲門舞集) the first contemporary dance institution in Taiwan, perhaps in Asia. Seeing her for the first time, I believe her interpretation/performance of her experience owes as much to Chinese culture as to contemporary dance, which I suppose is the sense behind Cloud Gate. And I expected her cultural rooting to be on the same sort of base as Cheng Tsung-lung, Cloud’s artistic director: through the medium of dance, the perfection of a traditionally-inspired visual scene, the full moon emerging, a spray of cherry blossom or the Western mountains and interpreted through the modern-contemporary gestural developed in the West. But Lin did not do that; she looks at contemporary dance through the lens of t’ai chi, I think. I could understand and appreciate her movements as gestures within a figure – Sponge – in the same way as holding the arms thrust forward in a half-circle or stamping the feet are gestures of the t’ai chi figure “Bear”. “Sponge” contextualizes (or “figurizes”) the gestures included in what Lin sums up as “absorb-discharge”. To get the most enjoyment out of Lin’s dance try to see her movements as the musculature of a figure, not as a series leading up to a figure. Ω Performer: Yu-Ju Lin / Lighting: Tien-Hung WANG / Sound creation: Jia-Wei HSU / Costumes: Chien-Wei WU, ZEIGARNIQ
OUR DAILY PERFORMANCE • premiere • Giuseppe Chico & Barbara Matijević • MC93 – Bobigny • 1, 2 June 2018, 19h • 75 min Α In Kinglsley Amis’ Lucky Jim, the Jim in question reminisces enviously about a jeweler-friend of his Dad’s who used a knack for irony to enable him to get away with speaking to customers only in insults. Our Daily Performance has more than a mere knack for irony. It is pure ironic construction that is used to explore our relationship with the information produced by information technology. Neither parody and nor yet satire, Our Daily Performance’s five performers show how 11 self-help, how-to and management-training situations are comic in themselves by cleanly yanking from context and precisely unpacking them. Certain of them, “Domestic Falls” or “Rape Escape” come to mind, are luminously comic, the one by acrobatic prowess and deadpan delivery and the other by rather chilling situational absurdity – the rapist is posed above and between the legs of the instructor – amplified by instructions in Chinese. Others, such as “The Fall of Man in 60 Signs” or the “Story of Exodus in Kung Fu figures”, while really funny, also point to serious themes such as the relation between spoken and body language. Still others, I am thinking of how the very physically comic “Shadow Wrestling” skit brings out the deep sense of isolation behind the demonstrator’s enthusiasm, go from high comedy to low pathos in under 180 seconds, or, I am thinking here of “How to play a Role”, the skit can remain so close to reality as to puzzle. Our Daily Performance uses Spanish, Mandarin, French and English, as well as International Sign, but is readily accessible to anybody who only has English. Ω Performers: Camila Hernández, Nicolas Maloufi, Marie Nédélec, Shihya Peng, Pietro Quadrino / Text: Giuseppe Chico et Barbara Matijević & performers / Lighting & sound: Stéphane Leclerq / Production: Cie Premier Stratagème
CELLULE • Nach (Anne-Marie Van) • 40 min • Atelier de Paris – Carolyn Carlson • June Events festival, June 2018 • Α The performance notes describe Nach’s first solo choreography, Cellule “dances the urgency of being there with an interior swept by an infinity of feelings.” Like the “krump” form of hip-hop itself, Cellule gets across a dialogue of deliberated emotions. Krump, which pushes physical limits, perhaps because it is meant as much as intensely personal expression as a social (or comparative) dance form. Robert "Phoolish" Jones of the Krump Kings band remarks, "Expression is a must in krump because krump is expression. You have to let people feel what you're doing. You can't just come and get krump and your krump has no purpose." Questioned on this point after an earlier performance, Nach strongly implied that she looks at krump as a therapeutic esthetic. I feel she responds (spontaneously) to music as she would to the interpretation and interaction of fellow performers, reaching for krump’s in-built dialogue to keep her professional qualities in trim and to clarify the sense of her performance. The result of Nach’s effort is fascinating: a dance in which the dancer dances her interior rhythm over a background of fine music while, in parallel, transcribing the emotion of the music and the emotion inspired by the music. Ω Performer: Nach (Anne-Marie Van) / Concept, choreography, text and images: Nach (Anne-Marie Van) / Scenography, lighting & video: Vincent Hoppe / Set décor: Boris Munger & Jean-Aain Van / Music: A.F. Diaphra / Production: Atelier de Paris – Carolyn Carslon
HARD TO BE SOFT: A BELFAST PRAYER • Oona Doherty • 50 min • L'Embarcadère, Aubervilliers • Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales, June 2018 Α A Belfast Prayer is the second part of Oona Doherty’s personal exploration of the ins and outs of Northern Ireland’s psychosocial order (That's what “Hard to be soft” refers to) – a complement to the solo Lazarus and the Birds of Paradise, featured by Rencontres last season. She characterizes Hard to be soft as “sci-fi stations of the cross”. The optic on Northern Ireland is millennial; she told me in an interview that she thought that the face-reddening hatreds of the past had been laid to rest but that coming along as dancer, and now choreographer, had shown her different. Doherty is a plastic performer with a strong streak of seamless, great-actor level mimetism in her, as well as dance skills and a sense for music – she’s working here with movie-style music by David Holmes, who composes for Steven Soderbergh (Sex, lies & videotape) – that suggests entertainment. Ω Performers: Episode I: Oona Doherty; Episode II: Ajendance company; Episode III: John Scott & Bryan Quinn; Episode IV: Oona Doherty / Production: Prime Cut Productions / Sound effects & music: David Holmes / Lighting creation & set: Ciaran Bagnall / Film : Luca Truffarelli / Video design: Jack Phelan
UNISSON • Ashley Chen • Espace Michel-Simon, Noisy-le-Grand • 14 June 2018, 20.30 • 65 min Α Rencontres says Ashley Chen has mixed disco, Sardana (a traditional Catalan dance consisting of much hand-holding and swirling around the musicians), Native American and other folk dance to create a welt-tanz (Uni – sso(u)n(d)) in this, the age of trash. Chen hopes with Unisson – which harmonizes from a violoncello – to give everybody, no matter where she comes from, no matter what the orientation, a chance to hold each other tight and see the light of true human community. Ω Performers: Magali Caillet-Gajan, Ashley Chen, Konan Dayot, Peggy Grelat Dupont, Mai Ishiwata, Théo Le Bruman, Lucius Roméo-Fromm / Musical direction: Pierre Le Bourgeois & Animaux Vivants / Lighting: Eric Wurtz, Producer : Cie Kashyl
GIKOCHINA-SA / ぎこちな さ • première • Mylène Benoit • 70 min • Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil • Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales, June 2018 Α Gikochina-sa – “Awkward, clumsy” in Japanese – says Mylène Benoit, creates a gestural and poetic language from unintentional movement that ranges from ordinary nervous tics to the wild jerking that sometimes accompanies illnesses such as Parkinson’s. Benoit sees such movement as the expression “untamed disorder” and, with the help of Atsushi Heli, expert in the gestural repertory of Japan’s mixed genre, entertainment-oriented Nichibu dance, has created a unique performance language in this piece. Ω Performers 16 June 2018: Célia Gondol, Atsushi Heki Nicolas Devos (musician), Pénélope Michel (musician) / Vocal work director: Jean-Baptiste Veyret-Logerias / Butôh specialist: Hino Sensei / Nôh specialist: Yoshiko Washio / Nichibu specialist: Atsushi Heki / Lighting: Annie Leuridan, Juliette Romens / Scenography: Christophe Gregorio / Costumes: Alexandra Bertaut
SOLITUDES DUO • Daniel Léveillé • 3 duos x 32 min • Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil – salle Jean-Pierre Vernant • Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales, June 2018 Α A follow-on to successful Solitudes solo (2012), according to Céline Gauthier (http://maculture.fr/danse/solitudes-duo-daniel-leveille), Solitudes duo is a choreographic study of the possibilities as duo – duet, couple, two together – in which “each dancer tests the body of the other and reveals him- or herself,” mirroring with one-on-one the test of one against choreography that made Solitudes Solo. In Solitudes Duo, Gauthier says, the three declensions of duo – man-woman, man-man and woman-woman – meet each other “through a shared movement that searches out common harmonies…” Ω Performers 16 June 2018: Ellen Furey, Esther Gaudette, Justin Gionet, Emmanuel Proulx, Simon Renaud / Light effects: Marc Parent / Music: Jean-Sébastien Bach, Pancrace Royer / Costumes : Geneviève Lizotte/ Rehearsals: Sophie Corriveau / Production: Daniel Léveillé Danse
PERFORMERS
MATTHIEU BARBIN • France Α Matthieu Barbin has performed extensively with the dance-performance choreograher Boris Charmatz, a leader of France’s new wave dance, including the “non dance”, which took shape in the 90s. Ω With Alix Eynaudi and Louise Hémon, Barbin created the visual object Cavern for Fondation Lafayette Anticipation and a 2017 collaboration on a cinematic object for the Fondation Hermès’ scene arts creation program New Settings. TOTEMIC STUDIES (PREMIERE), Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
MYLENE BENOIT • France Α Mylene Benoit, an alumnus of the University of Westminster in London, the Université de Paris 8, and Studio national des arts contemporains and previously an associate with both Le Phare – Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre Normandie and La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, was recently in residence in Kyoto, Japan. Ω Benoit told Rencontres that she considers choreography as choral writing, extending to the whole of the set and performance – including body, sound and material, light, vibration and text; she sees her choreographical work as visual art. Founding the Cie Contour Progressif in 2004, she has continued her work, most recently with Notre danse (2014) and L’aveuglement (2017). GIKOCHINA-SA ぎこちな さ (PREMIERE) Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
MARCO BERRETTINI • Switzerland-France Α Alumnus of the London School of Dance and Folkwangschulen Essen under Hans Züllig and Pina Bausch, Marco Berrettini has been working from France since1988, when he began working with the choreographer Georges Appaix, who had just created his Cie La Liseuse, performance-dance troupe (What do you think?). Ω Berrettini formed his own troupe, Tanzplantation, later renamed MELK Prod, in 1999. MELK pieces, which Berrettini calls, following Pina Bausch, Tanz-Theatre, include No Paraderan, *Melk Prod. goes to New Orleans (2007), iFeel (2009), iFeel2 (2012), iFeel3 (2016) and iFeel4 (2017) and, most recently, Body World Trip (2018). MY SOUL IS MY VISA (2008), Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
ASHLEY CHEN • France Α After studies at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Paris, Ashley Chen worked with dance-performance choreographer Thomas Duchâtelet before in 2000 joining the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, where he remained four years, also working independently on pieces such as the dance-performance video I’m not a gurrel!! with multi-media artist Marisela Lagrave. He returned to France for a two-year stint at the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, which he left for freelancing, working in Dublin, London, Brussels and France, notably with performer-choreographers Michael Clark and Boris Charmatz. Ω Chen founded the troupe Cie Kashyl in 2012, producing Habits/habits with Pierre Le Bourgois and, with Philip Connaughton, Whack!! and, most recently, Chance, Space and Time. UNISSON (PREMIÈRE) Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
TSUNG-LUNG CHENG • Taiwan Α According to the Sydney Dance Company and Cloud Gate Theater biographies, Cheng performed with Cloud Gate 2 (the innovative production company of Cloud Gate Theater) from 2002 to 2004 and served as its resident choreographer from 2006 to 2010 before becoming its artistic director in 2014. Cheng has choreographed and restaged works for Transitions Dance Company at the Laban Centre, London; Expressions Dance Company, Brisbane; the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts; and Focus Dance Company, Taiwan. Ω Cheng’s productions with Cloud Gate 2 include: The Wall, A Dignified Joke, Change, Happiness and Music, Crack, Blue Hour, Dorian Gray, and Beckoning. His most recent full-length work, 13 Tongues (2016), a portrayal of a legendary Taipei character and his neighborhood, takes up themes which critics say Cheng holds dear: locality, popular life and the individual. Tongues features at the Internationale tanzmesse in Germany at the end of August 2018. FULL MOON (2017), “Focus austral” program, Palais de Chaillot, April 2018
GIUSEPPE CHICO • France Α After beginning and ending a career as a professional basketball player, Giuseppe Chico moved to Paris in 2000 and began studying dance with Joao Fiadeiro, Vera Montero, Julyen Hamilton, Mark Tompkins, Vera Orlock, Pooh Kaye, KJ Holmes, Olivier Besson and for several years performing with the innovative dance performance troupe Cie Mille Plateaux Associés. Chico also collaborated with choreographer George Appaix, performance dancer Anja Hempel, and transdisciplinary artist Magali Desbazeille. W In 2007 he began working with Barbara Matjevic and the troupe Premier Stratagème. OUR DAILY PERFORMANCE (2017) Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
OONA DOHERTY • Northern Ireland Α Oona Doherty is an alumnus of the London School Of Contemporary Dance, University of Ulster and LABAN London and toured nearly 10 years with the firmly expressionist Dutch performance-dance troupe t.r.a.s.h. where she learned the tricks of her trade and became, as she has said, “an expert in expressing pain”. As well, she has worked with troupes such as Emma Martin’s United Fall troupe with its highly visual dance-performance pieces. W Other personal creations include Docnite ; Hard to be Soft – Episode One: Lazarus and The Birds of Paradise (presented at Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018: Le Colombier, Bagnolet); Hope Hunt; Leather Jacket Deluxe ; Lady Magma and Echo Hunt. HARD TO BE SOFT: A BELFAST PRAYER (2018) Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
LISBETH GRUWEZ • Belgium Α Lisbeth Gruwez attended P.A.R.T.S., choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s follow-on to Bejart’s Ecole Mudra, cradle of so many of European dance luminaries, and worked, from 1999, first, briefly, for Wim Vandekeybus and then with Jan Fabre, with whom she subsequently wrote Quando l'uomo principale è una donna (“When the leading man is a lady”), a much-remarked gender-questioning dance-performance piece inspired in particular by Yves Klein’s conceptual tableaux. W In 2006, with Maarten Van Cauwenberghe, she created the Voetvolk troupe which has been her principal creative vehicle since then. Her notable recent works include It’s Going to Get Worse and Worse, My Friend (2012), AH/HA (2014), Lisbeth Gruwez dances Bob Dylan (2015) and We're pretty fuckin' far from okay (2016). THE SEA WITHIN (PREMIÈRE MAY 2018), Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018.
KAORI ITO• Japan-France Α Performer and choreographer, contemporary dance and performance, working principally in France, currently and associate at the Maison des arts de Créteil (MAC Créteil). Ito has danced with Angelin Preljocaj, Alain Platel & Philippe Decouflé and performed with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Guy Cassiers. Ω Her most recent creation is Robot, l’amour éternel. Robot, performance-dance, uses narrative, dance, location-movement and set to explore the join between life and death, the artificial and real. As with other recent works, Je dance parce que me méfie des mots or Embrase-moi, Robot explores intimate concerns with verve and intelligence as a very language-oriented performance – a clever setting of traps and doors that lets her pop up and around as she does her narrative. For more perspective on Ito’s work, see: "Tatjana Jankovic documents intimacy that enables creativity: Kaori Ito, un corps impatient" Beyond Words 4 April 2018. ROBOT, L’AMOUR ÉTERNEL (PREMIERE) Maison des Arts de Créteil (MAC Créteil), 24 January, 2018.
DANIEL LÉVEILLÉ • Québec-Canada Α An alumnus of the Groupe Nouvelle Aire, Québec’s Ecole Mudra, founded in 1968 by Rose-Marie Lèbe and Martine Époque to promote a contemporary dance rooted in Québec culture, and which he joined in 1977, according to his official Canada biography, Daniel Léveillé has produced more than 30 works over the past 35 years, working with nudity and erotic themes in his pieces and getting a reputation as a “shock” and “marginal” choreographer. His watchword has been “transparency”: translated corporally, nudity is an expression of that, as gesture translates passion. His breakthrough piece Amour, acide et noix (2001) those that follow as he develops a public such as The Modesty of the Icebergs show an artist well-rooted in dance as dancing, with an eye on firmly on rigorous body expressiveness, rhythm and audience, qualities that have marked his recent works, where dancers are clothed and themes abstract: Solitudes solo (2012). Ω Daniel Léveillé founded the troupe Daniel Léveillé Danse in 1991. Today it supports the creation and international distribution of works such as Fréderick Gravel’s evocative performance-dance piece This duet that we’ve already done (so many times) (2014) – presented in co-production with the Atelier de Paris – Carolyn Carlson at the Théâtre de la Bastille in March 2018. SOLITUDES DUO (2017) Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
YU-JU LIN • Taiwan Α Yu-ju Lin is an alumnus of Cloud Gate 2, the talent development wing of the Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Theater, the first contemporary dance theater on Taiwan and in Chinese-speaking Asia. Its current artistic director is Chen Tsung Lung, whose dance piece Full Moon is on world tour with the Sydney Dance Company troupe (Palais de Chaillot, 11 April 2018) .Ω Yu-ju Lin performed with various notable Taiwanese choreographers before beginning her own career in 2010. While strongly part of the Taiwan scene, some of her creations were featured first in France, including I Am in France (2010) (created during a first residency in the country) and the video work Dry to Wear (2015). Recent choreography includes A Little Naked (2016), Seed (2016) and Being (2017). SPONGE (2017) Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
BARBARA MATIJEVIĆ • France Α Barbara Matijević studied dance with the choreographer and teacher Kilina Cremona in Zagreb, Croatia. After finishing literary studies, she worked with the performance choreographer Boris Charmantz, a leader of France’s new wave dance, including the “non dance” or performance-dance, movement which took shape in the 90s, before returning to Croatia and working with a number of local choreographers, in particular with Saša Božić and Željka Sančanin’s Kombinirane operacije troupe as actress and dancer. Notably, in 2006/07, she performed in Purgatory, written and directed by Joris Lacoste. Ω In 2007 Matijević founded, with Saša Božić, the troupe Premier Stratagème and began working with Giuseppe Chico. OUR DAILY PERFORMANCE (2017) Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
NACH (ANNE-MARIE VAN) • France Α According to a 2016 interview with Danseaujourdhui, Nach (a childhood nickname chosen as her “Krump-name”) started dancing hip-hop after seeing David Lachapelle’s remarkable documentary Rize (2005), when she was 16. Rize focuses on “krump”, an emotion-focused – almost therapeutic – style of hip-hop: “I had tremendous pleasure to feel like a Valkyrie, to be fêted in the circle [of krump dancers]”. She joined the Heddy Maalem contemporary dance troupe when Maalem, son of an North African father and European mother, and very much interested in mixing perspectives and people, decided to plunge into krump-style with his Éloge du puissant royaume (2013). Nach, who is French and from Lyon, has European and African ancestry, a biographical fact that has apparently much influenced her choices in dance and thematic. Ω Heddy Maalem wrote Nach’s first solo, Nigra Sum, Pulchra Es (“I am black, I am beautiful”) (2016). CELLULE (2017), June Events 2018
PAULA PI • Brazil-France Α Paula Pi has worked with such dance performers and choreographers as Clarissa Sachelli and Eszter Salamon (Dance for nothing), or such conceptual performers as Nadia Lauro (Jennifer Lacey & Nadia Lauro – Châteaux of France). Ω Her adaptation of German expressionist choreographer Dore Hoyer’s Afectos Humanos, ECCE HOMO, dealing with human emotions and affection premiered in 2017. ALEXANDRE (PREMIÈRE MAY 2018), Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018
CINDY VAN ACKER • Belgium-Switzerland Α Cindy van Acker began her career as a dancer with the Royal Ballet of Flanders and then with the Grand Théâtre de Genève until 2002 when she founded her Greffe danse troupe and began her career as a choreographer ; since 2006 she has taught body movement at the Haute école de théâtre de Lausanne (known as “la Manufacture”) and in 2013 began working with young dancers of the Ballet Junior de Genève, which she used to create her Magnitude piece (2013). Van Acker collaborates regularly on opera sets and settings with Romeo Castellucci, a playwright and actor known for a multi-disciplinary approach to theatrical performance, notably in sets and scenography. Van Acker’s other notable collaborators include performance-artist-choreographer Myriam Gourfink and the late musician Mika Vainio of the duo Pan Sonic. Ω Van Acker’s most recent solo dance piece Knusa (2016) is derived from and performed within the photographic installation Insert Coins by Christian Lutz. ZAOUM (DECEMBER 2016), Rencontres chorégraphiques 2018