An extract remodelled by the company Équinoxe (La Rochelle), artistic manager Lucie Robier, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2016) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Under the leadership of Lucie Robier, the company is made up of a dozen amateur performers hailing from a variety of artistic backgrounds. It deploys its activities in the studio but also in situ, in the street, in exhibition galleries, media libraries, etc. Passionate about improvisation, in 2013 the interpreters collaborated with the choreographer Dominique Petit, and worked on Odile Duboc in 2015. The group has been based in La Rochelle since it was set up in 2010. 

The project
Wishing to promote the discovery of the unique work of Ingeborg Liptay, an artist little known in France, Équinoxe chose the piece Lumière du vide (2010), in which Liptay plunged into the metal music of the American group Tool. Alongside this passion for rock, the aim was also to delve into the deep muscle structure required by dance and the intimate fine emotions, by bringing together thoughts of oneself and of the world into the same momentum and space. The show extract was entrusted to the group’s dancers by Agnès de Lagausie, Ingeborg Liptay’s assistant and interpreter. 

The choreographer
Based in France since the 1960s, the German dancer and choreographer Ingeborg Liptay, aged 82, has given a sound foundation to her many apprenticeships (classical, German Expressionism, Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, etc.) through her free spirit deeply rooted in an intimate relationship with music, all musics. Her dance gushes forth soundly on its foundations, porous through its attentiveness, substantial in its engagement of the entire being in motion. In 1972, Ingeborg Liptay, teaming up with the American pianist Morton Potash, opened a dance studio in Montpellier where she still teaches. 

From Essen to Paris

1960. Ingeborg Liptay joined Karin Waehner, a disciple of Mary Wigman, at the Schola Cantorum in Paris. She was 26 years old. She had studied classical dance and the Laban method in Würzburg in Bavaria. At the Folkwang School in Essen, Kurt Jooss transmitted his “belief of the possible fluidity of the body” to her.

New York experience.

1963. In New York. She studied with Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey. With Claude Thompson, she discovered “playing with gravity, the engine of dynamic dance”. It was “the experience of the positive body gravity”.

In Bird Land, she discovered the great jazzmen. The intense musical experience during her stay in New York was decisive for her relationship to music, to sound and the comprehension that it developed. She felt that “music can actually dance you”.

1967, back to Paris. Ingeborg taught modern-jazz at the Schola, in Colombes and elsewhere.

From Africa to the French garrigue

1970. In Casamance, she saw children dancing sacred initiatory dances with great sincerity. When she left Africa for France, she had understood that “there are dances which, linked to music, enable you to survive when life in itself is too difficult”.

In 1972, to get close to the natural environment of the mountains of St-Guilhem-le-Désert, she moved to Montpellier. She set up a studio with Morton Potash, an American pianist, and created with him from 1971 to 1983.

From 1985 to 1989, she produced works that were accompanied by contemporary jazz music from Doudou Gouirand, Eberhard Weber and Jan Garbarek.

Terre du ciel (Earth from the Heavens)

1993. Her solo “Terre du ciel”, with music by Arvo Pärt, was acclaimed by the press as a masterpiece. “In Japan, Mrs Ingeborg Liptay would be qualified as a Living Treasure”.

Philippe Verrièle, Les Saisons de la danse, Sept. 1994.

“...a great lady in the silence of her glory”

Dominique Frétard, Le Monde, 20 July 1996.

Her current company took shape in 1999 with the creation of the trio “Insula Deserta”, with music by Erkki Sven-Tüür. Next came productions accompanied by jazz music, from Miles Davis to Annette Peacock, rock music by Jeff Buckley and classical by Dimitri Chostakovitch.

BIRD, pour les oiseaux (for birds)

In May 2010, at the age of 75, Ingeborg returned to the stage with her solo “BIRD, pour les oiseaux” (music by Chostakovitch), which was performed on the Esplanade of La Défense, Paris. She danced in the 2012 creation “NuageAnge” (AngelCloud), which included music by Eberhard Weber, Jimi Hendrix and Arvo Pärt.

Further information

Company Website

Dernière mise à jour : juin 2012

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