extract from 33min20 to 36min10

Composed by Iannis Xenakis, Pléiades was originally a commission from the City of Strasbourg in 1979 for the Percussions de Strasbourg and the Ballet du Rhin. Having now become a key reference in contemporary music, the work has been performed in concert all over the world, however losing its choreographic vocation along the way. Alban Richard wished to revive this original link with dance by creating a “music and dance concert” that brings together six dancers and six percussionists on stage.

Conceived as a danced concert, each musical section gives rise to a specific spatialisation of percussion on stage, reconfiguring the space of dancers and musicians towards a progressive fusion between music and dance.

Alban Richard discovered contemporary dance while he was pursuing literary and musical studies. From the late 1990s, he worked for various choreographers such as Odile Duboc, Olga de Soto and Rosalind Crisp.

In 2000, Alban Richard founded Ensemble l'Abrupt for which he created about thirty very different pieces, always in close interaction with a musical work whose writing and formal structure he questioned. Consequently, each creation opens up new research and a new performance style, setting itself apart from the previous one. The way he develops his shows, using restricted improvisations to devise the work directly on stage, encourages the performers to become creators of their own dance.

Alban Richard has collaborated with the Alla francesca ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, the Ensemble intercontemporain, IRCAM and the Cairn, Instant Donné and Alternance ensembles, as well as with composers Arnaud Rebotini, Sebastian Rivas, Erwan Keravec, Jérôme Combier, Laurent Perrier, Raphaël Cendo, Robin Leduc, Paul Clift, Wen Liu and Matthew Barnson.

A prolific choreographer, Alban Richard is regularly invited by ballets and companies, both internationally (Canada, Lithuania, Norway) and in France, to create commissioned works.

Since 2015 he has been artistic director of the centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie, with a project based on both his practice as an author and on connecting with the territory and its inhabitants.

More information : https://ccncn.eu/english/

Founded in 1962, the Percussions de Strasbourg are world-renowned  ambassadors of musical creation. With their exceptional repertoire, the  group performs twentieth century masterpieces and commissioned new works  with the same concerns: to bring life to a contemporary heritage while  revisiting it constantly, and to continue to innovate in a context of  artistic diversification.

Since its foundation, the group still  stands at the heart of creation, thanks to its particular connections  with contemporary composers and the diversity of its abilities in terms  of musical formats: from duo to octet, from acoustics to electronics,  from recitals to musical theater and dance, etc …

Having been  dedicated more than 350 works, the group continues to maintain and  develop its unique instrumentarium in the world. It has recorded many  times and has received around thirty international awards, including a  Victoire de la musique classique in 2017, which the Percussions de  Strasbourg label won for its first record release, Burning Bright by  Hugues Dufourt.

The daily commitment of the ensemble to  educational activities is reflected in their various actions,  particularly with the public in Hautepierre where the ensemble is in  residence.

www.percussionsdestrasbourg.com

Having picked up a passion for the audiovisual at an early age from his two brothers, Nicolas Simon quickly developed a love of cinema and began making short films in his teenage years. He studied at the audiovisual ESRA school in Rennes, where he made two 16mm short films. In 2004, he met Emmanuelle Vo-Din, who introduced him to the world of contemporary dance. 

In 2008 he completed Making Rainbow, a documentary retracing the five months over which the first edition of the performance Rainbow was created. He then co-directed Le Grand Éléphant - L’Aventure des Constructeurs, filmed over two years in the workshop of La Machine as they designed and built the Grand Elephant of Île de Nantes: a giant, animatronic elephant. Alongside regular collaborations with several choreographers, including, Alban Richard, Margot Dorléans, Sylvain Riéjou, Daniel Dobbels as well as the companies Le Pôle and PJPP, Nicolas Simon has made several documentaries, including Les Constructeurs d’Éole and Je me souviens.

A place for dance open to everyone, where people come to see, dance and talk.

The centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie is a space of shared projects that questions the world in which we live, a receptive place where dance is at the heart of an artistic, political and civic-minded vision. It is a centre for the creation, hosting, production and dissemination of choreographic works, a hub that acts as a resource for training and research. It is a place shared with artists, residents, associations and cultural institutions, a place open to artistic creation and the contemporary repertoire.

Awakening curiosity, stimulating the desire for knowledge, opening up to differences, sharing real artistic, intellectual and human experiences – these are the challenges identified by Alban Richard for the centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie.

https://ccncn.eu/evenement/pleiades/