A total change of register for Alban Richard.

After the medieval ballads of Nombrer les étoiles, with Fix Me, the choreographer and artistic director of the CCN de Caen en Normandie is turning his attention to completely different sources of sound energy: the sermons of American evangelists, political speeches and feminist hip-hop songs. Constructed according to the movements of a classical symphony, this new production for four dancers once again explores the structural relationships between music and dance, but this time in dialogue with the vibrant synthesizers and pulsating drum machines of Arnaud Rebotini, an emblematic figure on the French electro scene. Does the body have the power, equal to that of the spoken word, to harangue? To fascinate crowds?

Fix Me, whose title plays on a triple meaning – it can be interpreted as “repair me”, “look at me” or the act of taking drugs – is “a choreography that seeks to[GW1]  transform the performers’ bodies into a power that cannot be reduced to their organisms alone”.

The dancers’ gestures translate the intensity of the discourse that the audience hears only partially: the bodies are moved by the textual flow, rhythm and tone of these words, by their raging desire to convince. Movements transcribe the word flows. Working from the concept of the shimmer, Jan Fedinger's lighting design envelops the performers and spectators in the same hypnotic and vibratory space. Outdoing each other in the energy they unleash to capture the audience's eyes and ears, music and dance interact closely until the bodies are pushed to exhaustion.

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/

Arnaud Rebotini is a singer, songwriter, producer and remixer, he has  become one of the most emblematic figures in electronic music today,  adept at straddling genres, both avant-garde and timeless, and bringing  them together.
For example, his Zend Avesta project (Organique, Universal 2000) married electronic music with a chamber orchestra.
With  his analogue synthesisers, he became a central figure on the scene of  new international techno, marking renewed enthusiasm for the use of  electronic instruments rather than just computers. His live shows have  always been unanimously celebrated (Music Components, Citizen 2008,  Someone Give Me Religion, K7 - 2010) and his remixes for pour Depeche  Mode, David Guetta, Rammstein, The Rapture, Bloc Party, Acid Washed and  Tristesse Contemporaine are as indicative of his sets at the biggest  clubs and festivals (playing live or mixing) as his collaboration with  the highbrow Groupe de Recherches Musicales, especially with Christian  Zanési for their Frontières project.

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.

+ d'infos : https://ccncn.eu/evenement/fix-me/