Après un rêve is neither a fiction nor a documentary.

It is not driven by a narration but by a path, a journey. It has no protagonist but an energy that moves from place to place. Nor are there any characters, but rather encounters. It follows the body of a female dancer in the body of the city. It is a performance, a visual poem, a try at re-enchantment.

In 1968, a militant cooperative of architects and city planners devised a new kind of large complex that could “change the city to change life”. Buoyed up by all the innovative ideas of the era (in terms of education, health, culture and housing), in a dialogue with the landscape, the urban complex celebrates the mixity of usages, generations and populations. This social and architectural avant-garde movement was to become famous: Godard held a video workshop in it, Rohmer produced its portrait…

In July 2010, when Julie Desprairies had just finished there an “Atelier de Création Radiophonique”, a programme for the radio station France Culture – a sound workbook for a future show in the district – violence broke out in La Villeneuve. The site was to become infamous, with the French President Sarkozy holding there his famous Grenoble speech on his vision of security.

Julie Desprairies decided to react to the horrifying images of shattered windows, cars on fire and desperate residents, and asked the director Louise Narboni to come and film the choreographic work accomplished there with the residents and users over the past year. Primary and secondary schoolchildren, students, workers and senior citizens, a choir, a market gardener and a paediatrician, dancers, singers – all residents or users of La Villeneuve – collaborated in the writing of Après un rêve.

Élise Ladoué, a female dancer, strolls from the north to south of the district, from open areas to apartments, from group to group, from terraces to gardens, from colour to colour.

She meets the local residents, and snatched conversations, songs and dances then take shape.

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

Louise Narboni was born in 1978. After studies in Cinema and operatic singing, she turned to shooting musical films. She is also a musical script, assistant to Opera direction and film editor, most notably on Jean-Paul Civeyrac' films, "Filles en noir" (2010) and "Malika s’est envolée" (2008). Her work includes: in 2011, Brahms 's "Concerto for piano n°2", Dvorak's "Symphony n°5", by the Paris Orchestra and Leif Ove Andsnes, "Les Contes du chat perché", opéra rural, directed by Caroline Gauthier, music by Jean-baptiste Singier (Arte).

Source : Les films de l'air website

More information : lesfilmsdelair.com