"Le bal du siècle" convoque les images des films qui ont marquée Karine Saporta, ce spectable créé, pour l'ouverture du Festival de Cannes en 1995, à la demande de Gilles Jacob, à la salle Debussy, au Palais des festivals. Pour la première fois en quarante-huit ans, le Festival de Cannes programmait en effet de l'art vivant. Ce Bal du siècle a été conçu à la gloire de tous les films qui surent la bouleverser. Ainsi la danse honore à sa manière les cent ans du cinématographe. Sur un écran géant, des séquences, et des images, travaillées le plus souvent en boucle, expriment parfaitement  l'obsession de la mémoire, qu'il s'agisse de La Belle et la Bête, du  Mépris, de Duel au soleil, du Guépard ou de Vertigo. Devant ces images  immenses, les danseurs, minuscules silhouettes, disent avec leurs corps ce que les dialogues ne sauraient entièrement exprimer. Avec des êtres de chair et d'os sur scène, la danse rendait hommage au cinéma. Ce spectacle a également été présenté au Centre Américain à Paris en début 1996.

Karine Saporta is a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur and an Officier des Arts et des Lettres. She founded the Association des Centre Chorégraphiques Nationaux of which she is the first President. She was elected for the second time President of the Dance Commission and Vice-President of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD - Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers) in 2004.

Right from the start, Karine Saporta defended at the highest level the artistic values responsible for her recognition and approval by the most eminent specialists as one of the leading figures of contemporary art today. 

She has been welcomed in all major dance venues, in France and abroad, with very many choreographies.

At the cutting edge of research into the body and the work of emotion in the dancer, she has revealed highly personal work methods.

Improvisation and technique but also reflection on dance themes and history form the foundations of Karine Saporta’s artistic and intellectual approach.

Her art is made up of baroque or dreamlike worlds, harbouring figures of flesh and wax, of giddiness of the senses and troubled hearts, of flamboyant pictorial images. 

From the Hispanic universe of the “Taureaux de Chimène” to the gothic images of “La princesse de Milan” or of the show “Le Spectre ou les Manèges du ciel”, not to mention the cinematographic form of certain productions such as “Le Bal du siècle” created at the Festival International du Film de Cannes in tribute to the centenary of cinema, or “Wild”, the choreographer shapes as much as a personal style the new forms of the performing arts.

Marie-Hélène Rebois is a French director born in Nancy. Alongside literary studies (literature preparatory studies for “les grandes écoles”, a Master’s in literature, history of art and philosophy) and theatrical training with the director Jean-Marie Villégier and the Festival international de théâtre de Nancy, her home town, Marie-Hélène Rebois produced her first short films and became a filmmaker. In her films, she develops her favourite themes, always related to the expression of social issues and artistic creation, where family sagas, interior journeys, religion, writing, music, painting, opera and dance play a large role.
 She collaborated in the educational work of the production department of La Femis from 1992 to 1997. She worked for one year with the Montpellier Danse Festival to produce a film on the history of the festival (Montpellier Danse 1980-2000) and a special evening for Arte (Montpellier Danse 2000, points de vue d'Afrique). This programme received a special mention at the 11th Grand Prix international video danse. In 2003, her film Ribatz, Ribatz ou le Grain du temps was awarded the French selection prize at the Festival international de cinéma de Marseille. She also produced for the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris a film on the analysis of the body in danced movement: Le Geste créateur as well as, for the SACD (Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers), a short film on a circus act Rondeau pour un fardeau, a piece with lifts, together with portraits of the pianist Vanessa Wagner, the choreographer Jean-Claude Gallotta, and the Italian puppeteer Laura Kibel. In Dialogue avec les fauves, broadcast on Arte, she shows just how far man can go in communication with wild animals, with what language and with what gestures. Noces d'or, la mort du chorégraphe, broadcast on France 2, is the last part of the trilogy that Marie-Hélène Rebois imagined and started after the death of the French choreographer Dominique Bagouet (the first two parts were Histoire d'une transmission, So Schnell à l'Opéra, 1999, and Ribatz, Ribatz ou le Grain du temps, 2003). She has since produced three documentaries for Arte: Maguy Marin, la danse cachée; Montpellier Danse, 1980-2010, Zigzag, for the 30 years of the Montpellier Danse Festival and Merce Cunningham, la danse en héritage, where she follows the last tour paying tribute to the man who was one of the leading artists of the 20th century. Alternating rehearsal periods, images from archives, and interviews, her film raises the issue of the transmission of a truly intangible heritage. In 2016, her last film, Dans les pas de Trisha Brown, was selected for the Festival international de cinéma de Marseille.

Sources : Ardèche Image ; Film-documentaire.fr ; CMCA