An extract remodelled by the Junior Ballet (Toulon), artistic manager Nicole Vivier, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2015) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Set up in 2008 in Toulon (Var), the Ballet Junior, led by Nicole Vivier, is the home port of determined students hailing from the four Conservatoire sites spread out over the Toulon urban area. Aged 16 to 40, these dancers, from different backgrounds and styles, wish to further their horizons and develop their interpreting potential by meeting with artists. They rehearse in a studio located in La Vallette-du-Var. 

The project
Wishing to get to know better the world of the trailblazer Doris Humphrey, the group chose Partita, choreographed in 1942, as the piece juxtaposes two languages: modern through its dance, and baroque through its music. An aesthetic shock that it seemed interesting to get to grips with. With Claire Roucolle, an expert in the remodelling of repertoire pieces and who had already danced this show with the company Labkine, the aim was to trace Humphrey’s legacy and her influence today, while at the same time refining the relationship between dance and music. Four very short dances (sarabande, courante, minuet, gigue) were selected, and presented by seven female dancers in a setting of seven small stools. A pianist on stage accompanied the show. 

The choreographer
A figure of American dance, Doris Humphrey (1895-1958) studied music, classical and folk dance, as well as Dalcroze eurhythmics. She founded the company Humphrey-Weidman, with Charles Weidman, in 1928 in New York. Also present on Broadway, she danced up to 1944 and choreographed pieces for her troupe before becoming the artistic director of the company José Limón in 1946. Inspired by natural phenomena and driven by a powerful humanism, she has a dramatic, strong writing style. 

Doris Humphrey was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1895 and grew up in Chicago. Her father operated a residence home for vaudeville performers called the Palace Hotel, and her mother offered piano lessons. As a girl, Humphrey studied piano, ballet, ballroom dance, Americanized Delsarte and Dalcroze's system of Eurythmics. A talented dancer, she began teaching ballet and interpretive dance to children when she was 15. During the next few years, Humphrey traveled the Santa Fe railroad line with a variety troupe, giving performances to railroad employees of her home-made aesthetic dances and Spanish numbers. When she returned home to Oak Park she began her own studio with her mother as accompaniest and business manager.

By 1931, the Humphrey and Weidman companies and their joint studio/school were firmly established in New York City. With Graham, Humphrey was considered by most critics to be a primary innovator of the new modern dance. Her theory of "fall and recovery"-- and the technique that sprang from it--was the foundation of her teaching method and her choreography. Underlying it, according to Humphrey, was the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche's idea about the split in the human psyche between each person's Apollonian side (rational, intellectual) and our Dionysian side (chaotic, emotional). The true essence of the modern dance was the movement that happened in between these extremes, which Humphrey labeled "the arc between two deaths."

Source: University of Pittsburg

More information

pitt.edu

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