François Raffinot is a French choreographer born on January 1st, 1953, in Paris.
He discovered his love for the arts at a fairly early age. At 10, he remembers he was marked by modern and contemporary music and, in particular, that of the composers Edgar Varèse, with his Electronic Poem, and Belà Bartók.
He pursued his studies at the Montaigne and Louis-le-Grand grammar schools where his interest in theatre quickly gave way to dance. At the age of 16, on holiday, he watched Nomos Alpha by Maurice Béjart, a ballet created in Royan in 1969 to a music by Iannis Xenakis. This association of dance and music made a deep impression on the young man.
 

At the age of 17, he enrolled in the classical dance classes given by Igor Fosca at the salle Pleyel. At the same time, he watched many shows and, in particular, those of Merce Cunningham at the Théâtre de l'Odéon.
In 1973, aged 20, he auditioned for the Théâtre du Silence, a company then directed by Jacques Garnier and Brigitte Lefèvre. He then settled in Grenoble, where he danced for Félix Blaska and at the Ballet de poche where he met the choreographer Alain Deshayes, in whom he found an ideal interlocutor. After a short stay in Rouen in early 1975, he tried his hand at theatre and cabaret in London, playing in particular at the Roundhouse in La Grande Eugène by Frantz Salieri. This enabled him to further his culture of cabaret and music-hall.
 

Alain Deshayes also put him in contact with Jean-Claude Malgoire, a leading specialist of baroque music. The two men worked together for the first time in 1974 for the remounting of Les Indes galantes, an opera-ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau.
In 1975 and 1976 he performed with the Peter Goss company, where Dominique Bagouet also danced, and actively participated in the choreographic collective Watercress. At the same time, he began his own research into ancient dances, especially based on the dances of Guillaume-Louis Pécour noted by Raoul-Auger Feuillet. Viviane Serry, who was a member ofWatercress then introduced him to Francine Lancelot. In 1978 he decided to resume his studies and to follow classes for a philosophy degree at the Paris IV-Sorbonne University.
 

We can then identify 5 major periods in François Raffinot’s artistic career, corresponding to the different structures (cultural institutions or companies) within which he developed his creations: Ris & Danceries, which he first joined as an interpreter in 1980 but then went on to co-direct (1984 to 1989), the Barocco company (1990-1992), the Le Havre – Haute-Normandie CCN, Ircam (1999-2002) and, last but not least, the Snarc (2002-2013).
In 1980 he joined Ris & Danceries, Francine Lancelot’s company, whose work on baroque dances held special meaning for him. He became a dancer and an interpreter there. Alongside Francine Lancelot, he re-appropriated and reinvented dances from the 15th to the 18th century. With her, he directed the company as from 1984. He won acclaim by choreographing the divertissements d’Hippolyte et Aricie (1985) directed by William Christie, as per a staging by Pier-Luigi Pizzi, and by re-inventing the design of Bal et ballets à la cour de Louis XIV (1987). However, François Raffinot began to make a name for himself by devoting himself to his own writing of baroque dance, proposing his Suitte d'un goût étranger set to music by Marin Marais, a piece for which he asked Andy De Groat, Dominique Bagouet and Robert Kovich to join the project. This was followed by Caprice (1986) and Passacailles (1987). In 1988 he worked once again with the conductor Jean-Claude Malgoire for the recreations of Zéphyre (1988) and Platée (1989).
 

In 1990 he left Francine Lancelot’s company and, together with Guilène Lloret, set up the company Barroco. Ever since, he has dedicated himself to writing a new aesthetics of baroque dance with an aim to instilling in it greater contemporaneity. He reflects, in particular, on the relationship between dance and music. For this reason, he created, at the Festival Montpellier Danse, Garden-Party ou les surprises de la conversation for which the English composer Michael Nyman produced the musical themes. In 1991 he staged, with Jean-Claude Malgoire as musical director Les Fêtes vénitiennes, the first part of which consists of extracts from the eponymous opera by André Campra, and the second of Pulcinella by Igor Stravinski. The following year, he choreographed Alceste, Jean-Baptiste Lully’s lyric tragedy, before staging Les Barricades mystérieuses, a trio created for the dancers of the Jeune Ballet de France. Were we to ask him about his research into the baroque world, he would say that “he has retained from these studies and activities a taste for the flamboyant, for machinery, illusion, and all that is excessive”.
 

In 1993 he was appointed co-director, with Guilène Lloret, of the Le Havre – Haute-Normandie National Choreographic Centre. For his first season, he created Les Météores. In his own words, the piece paved the way for a new era of creation, encouraging a freer and more personal style. For the Avignon Festival, in July 1994, he created Adieu, a piece set to music by Pascal Dusapin. In August that same year he presented Linden, as part of the Berlin Tanz Im August festival. The Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg was asked to compose the music. Adieu and Linden would then often be played together during the same show. In 1995, Pascal Dusapin was once again asked to compose the music for his new creation Sin arrimo y con arrimo. The title was inspired by a poem by Saint John of the Cross. In 1996 Au-delà was commissioned by the Komische Oper Berlin. The piece, interpreted by German dancers, is performed to musics by Giacinto Scelsi. A few months later, Scandal Point was presented at the 50th edition of the Avignon Festival. The piece strikes us by the use of Salman Rushdie’s voice and the very rock and roll title of the British band The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil. Having created the decors for Sin arrimo y con arrimo, the plastic artist Agnès Lévy collaborated again with Fançois Raffinot for Rift, created for the 1997 Octobre en Normandie festival. For his last year as the centre’s director, he created Remix to musics by György Ligeti and Heiner Goebbels. We owe him, during this same period, the conception and the first edition of Vif du Sujet in 1996, a SACD choreographic event at the Avignon Festival.
 

In 1999 François Raffinot set up the choreographic department of Ircam (Institute for research and coordination in acoustics/music), of which he was the director. The aims of this new department are “to set up a programme to raise awareness of choreographic art, to determine areas for audio-visual research corresponding to those of the research department, drive the development of certain techniques hand in hand with the pedagogical department, to promote exchanges between young choreographers and young composers by means of specific musical commissions, and to encourage the presence on stage of instrumentalists or singers alongside dancers”. Indeed, for the Agora Festival, François Raffinot created the piece Play-Back to a music by Edmund J. Campion, in June 1999, commissioned by Ircam and the SACD. In 2000 he worked closely with Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh, one of his most loyal interpreters, and with the composer Yan Maresz, for the piece Al Segno. Last, but not least, in 2001, he presented P.R. / On Line (Home studio) to Anthème 2 by Pierre Boulez and Animus by Luca Francesconi.
 

Stepping down in July 2002, he then set up his own structure, SNARC (Nomad site for choreographic research workshops) to devote himself to research and pedagogical laboratories focused on the body and the new technologies (dance/music/image). Witness to this is pas_de_direction that he created with the composer François Sarhan and the videographer Magali Desbazeille. This piece was designed for 3 performers. He then produced a series of Laboratoires: Rebound's Lab with the percussionist and stage director Roland Auzet, Totem for an acrobat, Salomé, Salon littéraire for 4 writers and Set, a piece for 7 women from different artistic backgrounds (March 2006). Alongside these projects, in 2005 he entered into a 3-year residency at the Arsenal de Metz where he created Set, a piece for 7 women from different artistic backgrounds (March 2006). He also became a member of the Centre des arts of Enghien-les-Bains. Since 2009, François Raffinot has been regularly invited to hold theoretical classes in art schools and universities, and publishes works, articles and fictions.

He was a philosophy teacher at the Lycée Steiner-Waldorff Perceval at Châtou from 2010 to 2015.

He has published 2 books and a number of papers on choreography. He is also a fiction writer.

Dancer, choreographer and educator. - Disciple of Beauchamps. - Member of the Académie Royale de Danse. - Debuted at the Court in 1673 in "Psyché", participated in most of Lully’s operas. - Soloist from 1680, he stopped appearing on stage around 1702. - Along with Lestang, appointed ballet composer for the Opéra in 1687, he participated in the Court masquerades and parties held by the Duchess of Maine. - He worked for the Collège de Louis le Grand de la Compagnie de Jésus, as soloist and apparently as choreographer in collaboration with his Master, Pierre Beauchamps, from 1691 at least. He succeeded his Master from 1697 to 1709.

Source : Data.bnf

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Francine Lancelot (1929-2003) began learning dance when she was 15 years old. She moved to Berlin in 1954 where she studied under Mary Wigman. Then, in Paris, she worked with Françoise and Dominique Dupuy. At the same time, she studied theatre, mime and acrobatics. She then joined the Théâtre de l’Atelier, where she worked with Pierre Conté and used this opportunity to discover and learn Conté’s dance notation method. She worked as a dancer, choreographer and actress in the Jean Dasté Company in Saint Étienne. From 1964, within the framework of the Musée des Arts et Traditions populaires (French Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions), she compiled traditional dances for the CNRS (French National Scientific Research Centre), under the leadership of Jean-Marie Guilcher. She taught these dances, in particular for the Institut de Musique et de Danses Anciennes (IMDA - French Institute of Historical Dance and Music) founded by Philippe Beaussant.

In 1979, Francine Lancelot met Antoine Geoffroy Dechaume, harpsichordist and musicologist, who would play an influential role in her career. He played, she danced, and everything that she read in books took shape naturally. In 1980, encouraged by Philippe Beaussant and the IMDA, she created the Ris et Danceries Company. She brought together dancers, choreographers and researchers with whom she created a dozen pieces of work, was involved in producing operas, comedies-ballets and, at the same time, managed to reproduce Pécour’s erudite choreographies for current-day audiences and to propose her own creations through a rigorously-studied baroque style. Rudolf Nureyev would recognize the quality of this second knowledge that called for an ever-so delicate balance between a taste for history and personal inventiveness. As such, he invited Francine Lancelot to choreography the "Bach Suite" solo (1984) at the Opéra de Paris, as well as the ballet "Quelques pas graves de Baptiste" (1985).

A dancer, choreographer, notator and innovator, actress and documentarian of traditional dances, Francine Lancelot combined all these skills to breathe life into a whole realm of dance, the Belle Danse. Through her passion, the Belle Danse reappeared as if it were the first time. It had not been seen for centuries. It burst forth from this oblivion. From notation to movement: Francine Lancelot did not just retrace these choreographies, she also produced them, performed them with their originality, their feeling, their life.

Source: The dance company l'Eventail 's website

Régine Chopinot, born in 1952 in Fort-de-l'Eau (today known as Bordj El Kiffan), in Algeria, was attracted to choreographic art from early childhood. After studying classical dance, she discovered contemporary dance with Marie Zighera in 1974. She moved to Lyon where she founded her first company in 1978, the Compagnie du Grèbe, which included dancers, actors and musicians. Here, she created her first choreographies. Three years later, she was awarded second prize in the Concours chorégraphique international de Bagnolet (Bagnolet International Choreographic Contest) for “Halley's Comet” (1981), later known as “Appel d'air”. Her next pieces of work “Délices” (Delights) and “Via”, introduced other media including the cinema to the world of dance. In 1983 with “Délices”, Régine Chopinot began her longstanding partnership with the fashion designer, Jean Paul Gaultier, which would characterize the period, which included works such as “Le Défilé” (The Fashion show) (1985), “K.O.K.” (1988), “ANA” (1990), “Saint Georges” (1991) and “Façade” (1993). In 1986, Régine Chopinot was appointed director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Poitou-Charentes (Poitou-Charentes National Choreography Centre) in La Rochelle (where she succeeded Jacques Garnier and Brigitte Lefèvre's Théâtre du Silence), which went on to become the Ballet Atlantique-Régine Chopinot (BARC), in 1993. Régine Chopinot made a myriad of artistic encounters: from visual artists like Andy Goldsworthy, Jean Le Gac and Jean Michel Bruyère, to musicians such as Tôn-Thât Tiêt and Bernard Lubat.

At the beginning of the 90s, she moved away from – according to her own expression – “ultra-light spaces” in which, at a young age, she had become acknowledged, in particular through her partnership with Jean Paul Gaultier. She then became fascinated with experimenting on confronting contemporary dance with natural elements and rhythms and on testing age-old, complex body sciences and practices, such as yoga. In 1999, as part of “associate artists”, Régine Chopinot invited three figures from the world of contemporary dance to partner with her for three years on her artistic project: Françoise Dupuy, Dominique Dupuy and Sophie Lessard joined the BARC's troupe of permanent dancers and consultants-researchers, as performers, pedagogues and choreographers.

In 2002, she initiated the “triptyque de la Fin des Temps” (Triptych of the End of Time), a long questioning of choreographic writing and creation subsequent to her creation of a voluntary state of crisis of general notions of time, of memory and of construction. “Chair-obscur”, her first chapter, focused on erasing the past, the memory, whilst “WHA” was based on the disappearance of the future. “O.C.C.C.” dealt with the “time that's left”, with what is left to be done, with what can still be done, in that simple, yet essential spot called performance. In 2008, “Cornucopiae”, the last work created within the Institution, concluded the end of a form of performance and opened the doors to another approach to sensorial perception.

Concurrently to her choreographic work, Régine Chopinot worked, as a performer, with other artists that she was close to: Alain Buffard (“Wall dancin' - Wall fuckin'”, 2003; “Mauvais Genre”, 2004), Steven Cohen (“I wouldn't be seen dead in that!”, 2003). In addition, she trained and directed Vietnamese dancers as part of a partnership with the Vietnam Higher School of Dance and the Hanoi Ballet-Opera (“Anh Mat”, 2002; “Giap Than”, 2004). In 2008, the choreographer left the CCN in La Rochelle and created the Cornucopiae - the independent dance Company, a new structure that would, henceforth, harbour creation and repertoire, all the works of Régine Chopinot. In 2010, she chose to live and work in Toulon, by its port.

Since 2009, Régine Chopinot has been venturing, questioning and intensifying her quest for the body in movement linked to the strength of the spoken word, through cultures organized by and on oral transmission, in New Caledonia, New Zealand and Japan. These last three years have been punctuated by a myriad of artistic creations: choreographies and films resulting from artistic In Situ experiences were created as part of the South Pacific Project. A privileged relationship initiated in 2009 with the Du Wetr Group (Drehu/Lifou) bore its fruits with the creation of “Very Wetr!”at the Avignon Festival in July 2012 and went on to be reproduced at the Centre national de la danse (National Centre for Dance) in February 2013.

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Last update : March 2012