Philip Glass is a former student of Nadia Boulanger and the "Julliard School of Music". He is the leader of the so-called “repetitive” music, based on imperceptible progressions and subtle structural ‘sideslips’, greatly influenced by non-European musics.

For 12 years, the choreographer, Viola Farber, the remarkable personality of American “Modern Dance”, was one of the main interpreters of Merce Cunningham’s creations, before founding her own company. It was she who created, for and by the Ballet Théatre Contemporain, Autumn Fields, a choreography characteristic of Cunningham’s legacy, consisting of several sequences connected by no logical links.

The Ballet finds its unity in the music and scenography of François Morellet, a visual artist, who, after having participated in the research conducted by the GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel - Research Group on Visual Art) and worked with kinetic artists, strove to pursue a work where constructed abstract art and minimal art interweave with unexpected humour. Morellet has invented a system of grids suspended from the ceiling that gradually invade the stage above the dancers and whose size and shape vary according to a game of opening and closing so that their shadows cast on the stage accompany the constant movement of the dancers.

Each element of Autumn Fields evolves according to its own structure and the obsessional shifts of Philip Glass’s music, finding an echo in the imperceptible variations of Morellet’s grids and in Viola Farber’s choreography. 

Born in Germany, Viola Farber emigrated to Texas with her family at the age of seven. Coming across Merce Cunningham by chance, she became one of his dancers most in the limelight, leaving him the day she could no longer bear the classic public-interpreter relationship. At the same time, she followed the classical lessons of Margaret Craske, “of effective harshness”, and of Enrico Cechetti, and, from the outset, stood out from the universe of Martha Graham and “from her proud suffering”. While she acknowledges that what touches her most with a dancer, is effort, she adds that, without grace, that effort would be meaningless. Overturning the conventional idea that expects a good dancer to adapt to all styles, she reminds us that each technique muscles and models the body differently.

The National Center for Contemporary Dance - CNDC - was created in 1978 at the initiative of the Ministry of Culture and the City of Angers. It followed the B.T.C. Ballet contemporary theater directed by Françoise Adret and Jacques-Albert Cartier, transferred to Nancy. Designed as a school of choreographers and the headquarters of a permanent company, it is run by Alwin Nikolais for three years.

When Viola Farber succeeded him in 1981, the school specialized in the training of dancers. Viola Farber forms a new company and inaugurates a teacher training program.

In April 1984, the management of the CNDC was entrusted to Michel Reilhac. The center still trains dancers and teachers. It no longer has a permanent company but serves as a production platform through residences. Large companies of international renown (in residence for two to three months) and younger companies (in the context of the "Summer Quarters") are then present. This is how Merce Cunningham and his company inaugurate the large Bodinier studio and that successive personalities such as Régine Chopinot, Maguy Marin, Odile Duboc, Dominique Bagouet, Mathilde Monnier and Jean-François Duroure, Edward Lock, Hervé Robbe, Philippe Decouflé, Catherine Diverrès and Bernardo Montet, Daniel Larrieu, Trisha Brown, Wim Vandekeybus ...

In April 1988 the new director, Nadia Croquet, continues to develop a policy to support creation, with a more specific openness to Europe. In January 1993, Joëlle Bouvier and Régis Obadia were named artistic directors of the CNDC, then labeled CNDC l'Esquisse.

The CNDC, which became a national choreographic center (CCN) in the 1990s, reinforces its mission as a choreographic center through the production of shows and its role as artistic advisor while continuing the training. At the same time, from 1986 to 2006, he worked with the New Theater of Angers, a national drama center, to offer a program of choreographic performances, thus increasing the audience and the readability of the dance to the public by multiplying the glances on the creation contemporary.

In February 2004, the CNDC is under the direction of the choreographer Emmanuelle Huynh, it intends to perpetuate the tradition of experimental contemporary dance and offer a school in connection with the dynamics of contemporary creation. From 2011, the CNDC School has two major courses, one leads to the National Diploma of Professional Dancer (DNSPD) and the license, the second prepares for a master.

Robert Swinston, who was appointed artistic director of the CNDC in 2012 by the Board of Directors, takes office in January 2013. Create and encourage creativity, develop the legacy of Merce Cunningham, program shows in various aesthetics, train artists autonomous, versatile and of a high level as well as fostering the emergence of new talents, this is the purpose of his project for the CNDC. Communicating to the public the foundations of a creative approach, raising awareness among young people and making the CNDC shine at the local, national and international levels are Robert Swinston's objectives for the CNDC.

The directors of the CNDC since its creation:

Alwin Nikolais (from September 1978 to July 1981)
Viola Farber (from September 1981 to July 1983)
Michel Reilhac (from March 1984 to December 1987)
Nadia Croquet (March 1988 to December 1991)
Joëlle Bouvier and Régis Obadia (from January 1993 to June 2003)
Emmanuelle Huynh (from February 2004 to December 2012)
Robert Swinston since January 2013