Choreography by Anthony Égéa
A choreographic extract remodelled by the group Amalgam (Merville), artistic coordinator Marie Dessaux, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2014) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Based in Merville, a rural town near Toulouse, the group Amalgam is made up of some ten young people aged fifteen to twenty-eight, 50% female and 50% male. Since 2012 Marie Dessaux’s short-piece choreographies have been an extension of her teaching in her school (jazz, hip-hop), and have been performed in the region. Marie Dessaux‘s career was profoundly changed by the discovery of Anthony Égéa’s style and, in particular, by the place that this choreographer grants to the female body (for example in his work Amazones in 2003). In this poetic approach, she identifies a way for young people to broaden their horizons and break away from a hip-hop approach at times reduced to break dance technicity.

The choreographer
Anthony Égéa is rare in that he has completed his hip-hop experience by high-level training in other styles: classical dance with Rosella Hightower in Cannes, and modern African American dance with Alvin Ailey in New York. This is obvious in the pieces performed by his company Rêvolution, created in 1991, just as it is in the classes he gives in the associated training centre. In 2008, the piece Urban Ballet addresses the notion of corps de ballet, with a headcount, exceptional for that time, of nine dancers, performing notably Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater, Ravel’s Boléro, and a composition by Xenakis. Naked, the bodies are the objects of a quasi-sculptural study. Two years later, Anthony Égéa composed Tétris for the Ballet de l’Opéra national de Bordeaux 

The artist
From a contemporary dance background, Célia Thomas joined forces with Anthony Égéa to become his assistant at the time of his creation of Urban Ballet. She is currently responsible for the transmission of this piece, placed at the core of her teaching, but that is now, for the first time, the subject of a revival for the stage. The Boléro is a highly emblematic part of this, taking to a new height the logic of the corps de ballet, rigorous unison and hybridisation by pure classical figures. The change in number of dancers to eleven today has had no impact: the aim is to make as few changes as possible to encourage a group with a good level to confront what is essential, as close as possible to professional practices.

Starting in 1984, Anthony Egéa embarked upon the long learning process of hip hop dance. Having gained awareness of numerous different techniques, he perfected his training at the Ecole Supérieure Rosella Hightower in Cannes thanks to a choreography scholarship from the French Ministry of Culture. He was also awarded the Lavoisier scholarship by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and trained at the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in New York.
His work on the subject led naturally to a streamlining of his movement and the construction of more abstract forms, confronting the virtuoso with the miniscule, the demonstrative and the expressive.
His work arose from the context of an incensed humanity and the hip hop dance rebellion.
Since 1999, his choreographies have caused his style to evolve, bringing his own vocabulary into contact with other languages. Anthony Egéa has a desire to “reveal dance from the inside, deeper down, from our skin to our feelings”. He chooses paths for transformation over the course of his pieces and projects, to call movement into question by developing hybrid forms that distance themselves from conventions and expectations. From solos to group pieces, his work changes according to the people he meets.        
Anthony Egéa places the body at the centre of his work, developing the energy and expressiveness of gestures, with creations like Tryptik (2000), Amazones (2003), and Soli (2005), where hip hop is revisited in a feminine way. In Urban Ballet (2008), the relationship between music and dance presented him with another objective: to mix urban dance with a classical score. This piece also received a Labanotation. With Clash (2009), two dancers engage in a bodily debate that challenges the notion of power, territory and borders. 
In 2010 he wrote Tetris for the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Bordeaux and Middle, in 2011, for the Beijing Dance Theater.   
In 2012, he choreographed Rage, a piece for six African dancers, offering a tracking shot of the contemporary Africa that so fascinates him. In it, he shows the vital rebellion, ardour and artistic hunger of dancers who offer, through their startling presence, a perspective of their continent.
In 2013, he embarked upon a new adventure, drawing inspiration from the world of the Wizard of Oz to develop a new piece aimed at a younger audience. This new reading of Oz led him towards new horizons where fairy tales, hip hop, gestural virtuosity and video collide.   
Keen to pursue collaborations with dancers from other places, he joined up with the project Käfïg Brasil, a piece for eleven Brazilian dancers by Mourad Merzouki, to write one of its scenes.
Since 2002, in parallel to his artistic work, he has directed the Centre de Formation Professionnelle (Professional Training Centre) for hip hop dancers from the Rêvolution company.

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

Amateur Dance and Repertory is a companion program to amateur practice beyond the dance class and the technical learning phase. Intended for groups of amateur dancers, it opens a space of sharing for those who wish to deepen a practice and a knowledge of the dance in relation to its history.

Laurent Barré
Head of Research and Choreographic Directories
Anne-Christine Waibel
Research Assistant and Choreographic Directories
+33 (0)1 41 83 43 96
danse-amateur-repertoire@cnd.fr

Source: CN D

More information: https://www.cnd.fr/en/page/323-danse-en-amateur-et-repertoire-grant-programme