Born in Lille in 1961. After studying architecture for a few years, Hervé Robbe set his sights on dance. He was principally trained at Mudra, Maurice Béjart's school in Brussels. He began his performing career dancing the neo-classical repertoire, then went on to work with various modern dance makers.

In 1987 he founded his company: le Marietta secret.

The course of his career is clearly founded on a constant renewal of his choreographic writing. Supported by loyal artistic collaborators, his work has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, associating the dance presence with visual, sound and technological worlds. His projects, polysemic works, take many forms: frontal performance, ambulatory shows and installations.

The place of the audience, its presence and view is decisive; the stage space is regularly called into question.

His arrival at the CCN (National choreographic Centre) of Le Havre Haute-Normandie offered more opportunities for his research.

In 1999 he composed his autobiographical solo Polaroïd. Within it, video images of places associated with his childhood appear and coexist with an uninterrupted physical display.

In 2000 he explored the theme of home with Permis de construire – Avis de Démolition, a diptych consisting of an installation and a performance. He went on to tackle the theme of the garden in 2002 with Des Horizons Perdus.

In a world constructed with screens – virtual containers for the body, evokers of death – in the duet REW he engaged in a dialogue between man and woman on the theme of suicide. In 2004, with the group piece Mutating Score, he returned to the idea of the performance area being a common space occupied by both audience and dancers. This installation-dance, while reaffirming this conviction about the force of movement, marks the culmination of a project on the use of new technologies, which are integrated into the show in real time.

In 2006 he designed the installation So long as baby...love and songs will be, a kind of manifesto of the preoccupations which underlie his work. The device is a containing structure in which the audience is invited to watch and listen to the dancer-singers present on screen. Hervé Robbe distanced himself from the stage with this, then returned to it in the works Là, on y danse in 2007 and Next days in 2010.

While maintaining his personal approach in his own productions, he regularly accepts commissions from the Opéra de Lyon, the Gulbenkian Ballet, the CNSMDP (Paris Conservatoire) and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Source: Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre Haute-Normandie

In 1973 Frédéric Flamand founded the group Plan K: here he questioned the status and representation of the human body by integrating plastic arts and audiovisual techniques into live performance.

From the outset Plan K developed its activities on an international scale, and the recognition from which it benefited abroad allowed it to establish its status.  Convinced of the importance for a company to be tethered to a place which allowed meetings and gatherings, in 1979 Frédéric Flamand opened a multi-arts centre in Brussels in an old sugar mill. Artists from various disciplines were welcomed here, such as Bob Wilson, William Burroughs, Charlemagne Palestine, Steve Lacy, Pierre Droulers, Philippe Decouflé, Marie Chouinard, Michael Galasso, Thomas Schütte, Joy Division, Eurythmics, etc… ‘La Raffinerie’ (The Refinery) is also a place of work, where an international dialogue between dance, plastic arts, music, and audiovisual arts takes place, hence perpetuating Plan K’s initial mission.

In 1987 Frédéric Flamand met the venetian artist Fabrizio Plessi.  Together they would develop a trilogy which approached the problem of technology envisioned in three different time periods: “La Chute d'Icare” (The fall of Icarus) (1989) considers the Renaissance and craft techniques.  The creation of Icarus at “La Monnaie” would reinforce Frédéric Flamand’s presence on large international stages.

Next were “Titanic” (1992) which talks about the industrial revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, and “Ex Machina” which evokes the end of the twentieth century and the spread of image and communication technologies.

In 1991, Frédéric Flamand was appointed as the artistic director of the “Ballet Royal de Wallonie”, a neoclassical company which he renamed “Charleroi/Danses, Centre chorégraphique de la Communauté française de Belgique”.

In 1996, Frédéric Flamand begun his consideration of the relationships of dance and architecture, both being arts of structure and space.  For the show “Moving Target”, he chose to work with New York architects Elisabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, taking inspiration from the uncensored diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky, one of the first classical ballet dancers to build the bridge towards contemporary dance.

Following this was the creation of the shows “E.J.M 1” and “E.J.M. 2”, based on the works of Edward James Muybridge and Etienne Jules Marey, still in collaboration with Elisabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio. “E.J.M. 2” was staged for the “Ballet de l’Opéra National de Lyon”, while “E.J.M 1” was made for the “Compagnie Charleroi/Danses – Plan K”.

In 2000, Frédéric Flamand created “Metapolis” with the iraqi-british architect Zaha Hadid, the 2004 winner of the Pritzker Prize, which is equivalent in architecture to winning the Nobel Prize.  This same year he met Jean Nouvel. Their collaboration resulted in the creation of “The Future of Work”, a show which would be viewed by over 600 000 people during its five month run.  This achievement adhered perfectly to Frédéric Flamand’s preoccupation with gaining the largest possible audiences for the art of dance.  In 2001 he created the double show “Body/Work” and “Body/Work/Leisure” as an extension of his collaboration with the architect Jean Nouvel.

The Venice Biennale entrusted to him the artistic direction of the First International Contemporary Dance Festival of the Venice Biennale in 2003.  He opened the festival with the creation of “Silent Collisions”, directed with californian architect Thom Mayne.

In September 2004, he was jointly appointed as General Director of the “Ballet National de Marseille” by the minister of Communication and Culture in the City of Marseille and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Region.

He created “La Cité Radieuse” (The Radiant City) with french architect Dominique Perrault, “Metamorphoses” with the renowned brazilian designers Humberto & Fernando Campana, and “La Vérité 25X par seconde” (The Truth 25X per second), with chinese architect-plastic artist Ai Weiwei.

Frédéric Flamand also enriched the Ballet National de Marseille’s repertoire by inviting external choreographers including William Forsythe, Lucinda Childs, Nacho Duato, the french Thierry Malandain, Michel Kelemenis, and Olivia Grandville & Eric Oberdorff, and the belgian Michèle Noiret, …

Frédéric Flamand is an Official in the “Ordre des Arts et Lettres de la République Française”.

Born in 1963, Emmanuelle Huynh studied both philosophy and dance. Having performed with Nathalie Collantes, Hervé Robbe, Odile Duboc, Catherine Contour and the Quatuor Knust, in 1994 she was awarded a prestigious Villa Médicis hors-les-murs grant to go to Vietnam, and upon her return she created her first piece, a solo, Múa, with the lighting designer Yves Godin and the composer Kasper T. Toeplitz. The creation of Múa was the first step in her ongoing creative collaborations with artists from different fields.

She continued her choreographic work with projects in which she encountered practicians from many different disciplines: the astrophysicist Thierry Foglizzo explaining his research on black holes onstage with six dancers in Distribution en cours (Casting to be announced) in 2000, as well as many plasticians: Erik Dietman for the performance piece Le modèle modèle, modèle; Frédéric Lormeau for Vasque fontaine/partition Nord; Fabien Lerat for Visite guidée/vos questions sont des actes; Nicolas Floc’h for Bord, tentative pour corps, textes et tables in 2001; Numéro in2002; La Feuille in 2005; Jocelyn Cottencin for Cribles in 2009.

She created several pieces based on literary works: Bord, tentative pour corps, textes et tables, a choreographic project based on texts by Christophe Tarkos, and A Vida Enorme/épisode 1, a duo based on texts by the Portuguese poet Herberto Helder (2003).

Emmanuelle Huynh creates choreographic vocabulary which is constantly changing, specific to each project. In Heroes (2005). a piece for seven dancers and a musician, she placed onstage heroic figures from our childhood; Le Grand Dehors (The Great Outdoors), a tale for today, created in 2007, is related to the “lost dances,” those phrases we give up, leave behind in the choreographic creative process, which evoke a certain state of affairs, of the time.

In 2009, Emmanuelle Huynh began an atypical collaboration with the ikebana master Seiho Okudaira in Shinbaï, le vol de l’âme (Shinbai, the stolen soul), in which ikebana – the Japanese art of flower arranging –  and dance respond to each other, resulting in the creation and performance of a rikka (bouquet).

Her interest in Japan and Japanese artists had already brought her to choreograph the duo Futago (twin in Japanese) in 1998, under the auspices of The Monster Project, a dialogue of choreographic language created in Kyoto with the Japanese choreographer Kosei Sakamoto, based on the theme of the monster. Spiel, a duo with the Japanese performance artist Akira Kasai, was the first stage of work at the Festival Extra in Bonlieu in April 2011, then at the Morishita Studio in Tokyo.

In 2009, the creation of her piece Cribles at the Festival Montpellier Danse introduced a new relationship with music in the choreographer’s creative process: the score of the piece Persephassa (1969) by Iannis Xenakis became the principal protagonist of the work, with its 11 dancers. The version of the work called Cribles/live in 2010, with the musicians of the Percussions Rhizome, brought an even deeper appreciation of this relationship between the dancers and the musicians sharing the same space: the musicians were spaced around and outside the audience, according to Xenakis’ instructions.

Emmanuelle Huynh has developed over the past fifteen years her pedagogical work, targeting arts schools and training programmes for dancers, in the form of workshops and teaching at these schools, among others the ex.e.r.ce programme at the Centre Chorégraphique National of Montpellier. She has organised several work sessions involving artists from different fields: Hourvari, laboratoire instantané at the Centre Pompidou in 2001, Edelweiss at the CCN of Montpellier in 2003, and Ligne d’arrivée during a residency of her company at the Domaine départemental of Chamarande in 2004. As a collaborator for the magazine Nouvelles de Danse, she organised a series of interviews over many years with the American choreographer Trisha Brown, published in 2012 by the Editions Les Presses du réel, Trisha Brown/ Emmanuelle Huynh.

Emmanuelle Huynh also does performance work in museums. In July of 2004, she was the Artistic Director of the Festival Istanbul Danse, a cooperative project between Turkish and French artists involving touring, pedagogy and arts discussions. She rewrote the pedagogic plan for the École supérieure of the CNDC in Angers when she was appointed its director in 2004, where she also created the Essais training programme, now a master’s degree programme in dance, creation and performance, in partnership with the Université Paris 8 Saint-Denis and the Beaux- Arts School of Angers (Esba-talm). She mentored emerging artists, notably in the Schools Festival, a bi-annual international conference for dance schools.

From 2004 to 2012 Emmanuelle Huynh was the Director of the Centre national de danse contemporaine in Angers (CNDC), where she implemented her project for this national choreographic center which is also an institution of higher learning focused exclusively on contemporary dance. The two programs of the school were offered to young choreographic artists, performers (the FAC program) as well as young creators (the Essais program). The artistic mission of the CNDC consisted then of five different axes: creation, artists residencies, programming the dance season at the Quai, a forum for performing arts in Angers, the École supérieure of contemporary dance, and educational, community and audience outreach.

In 2013, Emmanuelle Huynh reactivated her Compagnie Mùa, continuing her creation and pedagogical work as well as international and transdisciplinary projects.

In October 2014 she created TÔZAI!... piece for 6 performers (whose her) at Théâtre Garonne in Toulouse.

At the same time, based on an invitation from the French Embassy in New York, Emmanuelle Huynh began a two year project, New-York(s), with Jocelyn Cottencin, consisting of film portraits and performance pieces which will create a portrait of the city of New York through its architecture, its spaces and its residents. The installation will be created at the Passerelle Centre d’Art in Brest in February 2016 and the performance which will launch the installation will be during the Festival Danzfabrik/ Le Quartz in March 2016.

Part of the preparation of New York(s) is a long term collaboration with the Japanese choreographer Eiko Otake, who emigrated to the USA 40 years ago – whom Emmanuelle met in 2013. This collaboration includes several public presentations (Brussels in May 2015, New York in June 2015 and February 2016, Berkeley in April 2016…).

Emmanuelle Huynh is also preparing a creation based on Formation, the autobiographical book by Pierre Guyotat.

Since 2014, she has been an associate assistant Master at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture in Nantes.

Source : website of the company Múa : http://emmanuellehuynh.fr/index.php/fr/biographies