Christian de Portzamparc’s building consists of three entities: the Musée de Bretagne, a scientific space and its planetarium, and a library that intermingle. Recently inaugurated at the time of Julie Desprairies’s creation, this monumental building has not yet been fully adopted by its users. Many criticise its enormity: it is too expensive, too vast, too sculptural.

Printemps is the result of a commission. This time the choreographer did not choose the site and nor is she familiar with this type of architecture. Julie Desprairies decided to appropriate the place with the help of its users and employees. With them and her team, she set off to physically discover these new spaces, to understand their issues and to give them an interpretation that resembles them.

With dance just as with scenography, there’s no question of trying to be the most spectacular. “The challenge was to take on Portzamparc’s writing with our tools, means, references and tastes, often far removed from those of the architect. He suspends the museum lobby and makes his ground floor completely clear of supporting structures, adorns his frontage with a sculpture, places a pyramid on its top, slants a planetarium: we shall sleep, read and draw on the windows, we shall grow green plants”, she declares. 

A corps de ballet made up of one representative from each of the 37 towns of the agglomeration that had participated in equipment funding, was recruited, a large collection of flowery textiles exchanged for seeds to be grown in the abandoned areas of the building was launched, videos testifying to the inclusion of the building in its nearby (the district) and distant (Brittany) context were shot, a repertoire of scores by Philippe Hersant was assembled... At the end of the day, 92 dancers, 17 architects/visual artists and 46 musicians, for a total of eight months during regular meetings supervised by 14 professionals (4 dancers, one visual artist, one architect, one light designer, one videomaker, one conductor, one choirmaster, 4 music teachers), worked together to elaborate a shared gestural, plastic and musical vocabulary.

Printemps, the public rendering of this work, for a capacity of 700 spectators, is devised as a vast factory in which the public is invited to create its own path. Everything is moving as everything is at work, in action. The public is won over by the dance, and quickly it’s impossible to know who’s a dancer and who isn’t, which movement is planned, set and written and which action is improvised by chance. There is a delicate balance between the danced gesture and the fortuitous dance, all the more so in a place that encourages the displacement of bodies.

Source : Cie Desprairies

Following theatre and visual arts studies, she created her first production in 1998 in stone quarries of Pont-du-Gard. The site’s materials, usages and specificities are at the origin of her work. She asserts her contextual approach by applying it to a number of modern and contemporary architectures. Her choreographies are written and presented in the buildings, whose spatial, historical and human characteristics guide her dramaturgical, plastic and choreographic choices. She advocates applied dance (like “applied art”), where the body serves as a tool to measure the spaces built. Her aim is to give visibility to the movement of places.

 Her love of the gestures taken from the places she occupies has led to her interest in working gestures. She frequently associates with her creations the people she has met in these places (140 inhabitants and tradespeople from the Gratte-ciel in Villeurbanne, 192 amateurs and employees from the Opéra de Lyon). While her performances take place in public places, she develops adaptable projects, based on landscapes and agriculture or on the theme of the funfair.

 She has set up an “Atelier de création radiophonique”, a programme for the radio station France Culture and produced three films: Autour du parc at La Villeneuve in Grenoble with Louise Narboni, Cinq points de vue autorisés on Les Courtillières, with Vladimir Léon and L’Architecte de Saint-Gaudens, with Serge Bozon. She has mounted a number of projects overseas, inviting native dancers, and has written Manuel d’entraînement régulier du danseur urbain and Danser l’architecture (2017).

Source : Cie Despraires

Vladimir Léon (born 1969 in Moscow) is a director, actor and producer. He danced in "Mods", a film by Serge Bozon, directed by Julie Desprairies and co-directed a short film entitled "Cinq points de vue autorisés sur les Courtilllières » (Five Authorized Viewpoints on Les Courtilllières), as part of the City's Dance Inventory Of Pantin (France) imagined the choreographer. He is the producer of the « L’Architecte de Saint-Gaudens" (The Architect of Saint-Gardens), a film by Julie Desprairies directed by Serge Bozon, completed in 2015. He also directed "Far from the front", "Nissim dit Max", "Le Brahmane du Komintern" (The Brahmin « Les Anges de Port Bou" (the Angels of Port Bou).
He took over most of the creations of Compagnie des Prairies and co-signed with Julie Desprairies the "Petit vocabulaire danse / architecture" (2005) and the "Petit vocabulaire dansé du Center Pompidou-Metz" (2011).

Source : Compagnie des prairies 's website

More information : compagniedesprairies.com