Showroomdummies #3, inspired by La vénus à la fourrure by Leopold von Sacher Masoch (1870) is a bewildering performance mixing dance, theater and visual art.
Severin, main character, is a man  who falls in love with a statue of Venus. He met Wanda troubling  personification of this venus that will allow him to fulfill his  fantasies. Wanda, his goddess, and Severin which will soon voluntarily  become its slave.
In a combination of austerity and  sensuality the work progresses through a slow and mechanical  choreography supported by the electronic music of the Austrian composer  Peter Rehberg.

For around ten years, Gisèle Vienne has been weaving stylistic links between puppetry art, choreographic performance, visual arts, scandalous literature (Jean Genet, Catherine Robbe-Grillet, Denis Cooper, etc.) and the underground music scene (Tujiko Noriko, Pita, SunnO, Boris, Corrupted, etc.).

Following her philosophy studies and an apprenticeship as a contemporary puppeteer at the École supérieure nationale des arts de la marionnette in Gent (Belgian Higher School of Puppetry Arts), Gisèle Vienne began making life-size puppets which she (dis) articulates. She brings dance and puppetry together to invite the spectator to understand the aspects of humankind in an atmosphere of beauty which focuses on order, disorder and scenic experimentation.

To complement her performances, the artist now proposes extensions of her scenic work in the form of photos (Black Noise exhibition, paying tribute to Steven Parrino) and installations (during a collective exhibition, in the suite of a Tokyo hotel).

Since Showroomdummies in 2001, in partnership with Etienne Bideau-Rey, her puppets form the axis around which a handful of actors-performers, invested in their whole slow, majestic body dynamics gravitate, against a backdrop of Black Metal lyrics.

Source : programme CCN - Ballet de Lorraine 2012 - 2013

More information : http://www.g-v.fr/fr/

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

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