Skip to main content
Back to search
  • Add to playlist

Words of dancers

Words of dancers

Words of dancers

Paroles de danseurs

Film realized by Luc Riolon and Rachel Seddoh about the CNDC's school (2003)

Dupuy, Dominique

Dominique Dupuy entered Jean Weidt's Ballets des arts at the age of 16, where he first performed solo roles such as that of the son in “La Cellule” by Jean Weidt, who was awarded first prize in the competition of the Archives internationales de la danse in Copenhagen in 1947. After several years dancing with Françoise Dupuy as “Françoise et Dominique”, the pair founded the Ballets modernes de Paris together, as part of which Dominique Dupuy would interpret several legendary roles: le Faune, le Mandarin merveilleux, le Piéton de l'air, l'Homme et son désir. Dominique Dupuy created six solos, the first of which came into being at the request of Amélie Grand and was conceived for the first week of the Avignon Dance Week, a precursor of the Hivernales Dance Festival: “Le Cercle dans tous ses états” (1979), “Trajectoires” (1980), “En vol” (1983), “Ballum circus” (1987), “L'homme debout, il…” (1995), “Opus 67-97” (1997). On more than one occasion, Dupuy expressed his opinion on the experience of making a solo, both at conferences and in publications. The project which would revive his solos came into being at the request of Luc Petton, for whom Dominique Dupuy recreated the cube sequence from “En vol” for the project “Passeur de danse”. He then recreated five other sequences for “Passeur de solitudes I”, presented in May 2000 at the Regard du cygnet centre in Paris and at the Avignon Hivernales Dance Festival.

From 1995 to 2007, he and Françoise Dupuy directed the Mas de la danse – the principal centre for the study and research of contemporary dance in France. Since then he has devoted his time to putting his archives in order.

Adret, Françoise

Françoise Adret, born in August 7, 1920, was a French ballet dancer, a teacher, a choreographer and company director.


She studied with the leading Franco-Russian teachers in Paris, including Madame Rousanne Sarkissian, Victor Gsovsky or Sergei Lifar. In 1943, she began her professional career as a dancer with some recitals during a short transition at the Paris Opera Ballet. There, with the guidance of Sergei Lifar, she made her first choreography, Conjuration in 1948.


Later that year, Adret left the Paris Opera Ballet and became ballet mistress of Les Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit. and the Ballet of the Netherlands Opera. After being ballet mistress at Opéra de Nice, she spent a few years as an international guest choreographer. While residing in Panama, she created the Ballet Nacional de Panamá. Returning to France, Adret joined Jean-Albert Cartier in 1968 in the creation of Ballet Théâtre Contemporain, the first national choreographic center, established in Amiens. Then, she worked with the new Centre National de la Danse (CN D), worked as an inspector general for dance projects in the Ministry of Culture, director of Lyon Opera, find again her place as Ballet mistress next to Roland Petit with Ballet National de Marseille, worked with Ballet de Lorraine…


In recognition of her role in developing contemporary dance in France, she received the Grand Prix National de la Danse in 1987, and in 1994 she was named as a chevalier in the Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur.


Source : Numeridanse

Obadia, Régis

Régis Obadia was born in 1958 in Oran, Algeria. He studied dance from 1976 to 1979 at the Institut des Arts et du Mouvement, run by Françoise et Dominique Dupuy, and was initiated into theatre by Jacques Lecoq. In 1980 he formed the l'Esquisse company with Joëlle Bouvier. Their earliest pieces thrust the pair into the national and international limelight.
Directors of the Centre National de la Danse Contemporaine, Le Havre from 1986 to 1992, they were appointed artistic directors of the CNDC, Angers in 1993, renamed CNDC l'Esquisse, which they directed until 2003.    
Since 1998, Régis Obadia has pursued a solo creative career.    
An important figure in modern dance since the early 1980s, Régis Obadia has marked the memories of those who have seen him with the feverish sensuality and powerful gestures of his pieces. With the founding of his own company in 2003, he asserted his distinctive style and his open-mindedness by working just as happily in the field of theatre as that of pure dance. His regular collaborations with Russia, in partnership with Lisa Wiergasova, have won him prestigious prizes, including a Golden Mask in 2004 for his choreography of “The Rite of Spring”, and a Seagull in 2004 for his direction of “The Idiot” at the Moscow  
Chaika Festival. After “The Rite of Spring” to Stravinsky's music, he composed “Réversibilité” (2005), inspired by Baudelaire's “Les Fleurs du Mal” and “Trois” (2006), set to Schubert's “Death and the Maiden”, performed at the Théâtre Sylvia Montfort, Paris. During this time he also produced the Dominique Mercy documentary “Danse Pina Bausch” (2003), in homage to the iconic German choreographer.    

Source : the company Régis Obadia's website

More information

regisobadia.com

 

Lagraa, Abou

Born in Annonay, Abou Lagraa began dancing at the age of 16 before entering the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse, Lyon. He began his career as a dancer at the S.O.A.P. Dance Theatre, Frankfurt with Rui Horta and became his assistant on a project at the Calouste Gulbenkian Centre, Lisbon. He was soon noticed and went on to work with Robert Poole, Denis Plassard and Lionel Hoche. His qualities as a performer have been rewarded twice:  in 1998 by the 2nd Prize for performance at the Paris International Dance Competition, then in 2009 by the prize for Best Male Dancer, awarded by the International Movimentos Dance Prize. In 1997 he founded his own company, La Baraka.


Once again, recognition came quickly; numerous French venues programmed the young choreographer and he received proposals for collaboration. As a result, after 4 years as an associated artist at Bonlieu Scène Nationale in Annecy, since 2009 Abou Lagraa and his company have been hosted in production residency at Gémeaux Scène Nationale, Sceaux. The fame of the company spread rapidly beyond France's borders and tours followed one after the other, throughout Europe and also in the United States, Algeria, Tunisia and Indonesia… Alongside his work with the company, Abou Lagraa is regularly in demand by large organisations.

In 2001 he devised Fly, Fly for the CCN Ballet de Lorraine. This piece later was subsequently added to the repertoire of the ABC Dance Company of St Pölten in Austria.


In 2003 he devised a work for the second-year students of the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine, Angers, then in 2007 for the pupils of the Frankfurt Hochschule and the pupils of the Centre Méditerranéen de Danse Contemporaine, Tunis.

In 2006 his work entered the repertoire of the Paris Opéra Ballet with Le Souffle du Temps, a piece for 21 dancers, including 3 étoiles (Marie-Agnès Gillot, Manuel Legris, Wilfried Romoli). Then, in 2008, he composed Everyone's One at the invitation of Ballet Memphis (USA).


Since 2009, in association with the Algerian Ministry of Culture and th Algerian Agency for the Cultural Brilliance, he works, with Nawal Aït Benalla-Lagraa, in the elaboration of a “Mediterranean Cultural Bridge", the project of French-Algerian cooperation for the development of the dance and the artistic exchanges which will contain a program of Training and creation. In this frame, he sees confiding for July, 2009, the choreography of Closing ceremony of the 2nd Pan-African Festival of Algiers. In 2010, he creates the Ballet Contemporain d'Alger, under the Nawal Aït Benalla-Lagraa's educational responsibility, with a first piece NYA. The success of which ends in several national and international tours.


This piece was to be distinguished in 2011 when it was awarded the Grand Prix de la Critique as “Best Choreography of the Year”.

In 2016, he becomes the « Dream up » ambassador, an international arts-based education programme set up by the BNP Paribas foundation. This programme will help some 30,000 underprivileged or disabled children and teenagers to develop and find fulfilment by practising an artistic or creative activity. 


In 2016, he becomes “Chevalier des arts et des lettres” nominated by the French ministry of culture. 


Source : Cie La Baraka


More information : https://www.aboulagraa.fr/ 

Riolon, Luc

After studies of mathematics preparatory class and medecine studies, Luc Riolon begins to make films within the framework of his Faculty of Medicine, then met the famous choreographers of the 80s (Maguy Marin, Mark Tompkins, Josef Nadj, Daniel Larrieu Daniel, Odile Duboc, Josette Baiz, Angelin Prljocaj, etc.) with whom he shoots numerous films (re-creation for the camera, the illegal securements). In the 80s with the American choreographer Mark Tompkins he introduces the video on the stage, broadcasting live on big screens the images which he shoots with his camera by being on the stage with the dancers, mixing live images and pre-recorded images. With Daniel Larrieu he participates in the creation of the famous show WATERPROOF, the contemporary choreography which takes place in a swimming pool, by filming live) the dancers dancing in the water and mixing the live images with pre-recorded underwater images. This choreography has been shown in many countries (USA, Canada, Spain, England…)
Then he collaborates during 10 years with the famous french TV producer Eve Ruggieri for her programs" Musics in the heart ". He shoots with her of numerous documentaries about classical music, opera singers and dance. From 1999 he directs documentaries of scientific popularization, by following researchers attached to the resolution of a particular ecologic enigma. These two artistic and scientific domains which can seem separated are nevertheless, for Luc Riolon, connected by the same approach : the deep desire to understand the world, by the art or by the scientific research, and to restore it to the largest number. Among his recent scientific documentaries, we can quote for example " The Enigma of the Black Caiman ", Living and dying in the swamp " or " The Nile delta: The end of the miracle ". “Chernobyl, a natural history ? “ These documentaries of scientific popularization recently have been awarded in international festivals.


Source: Vimeo

CNDC - Angers

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

Parole de danseurs

Interpretation : Françoise Adret, Michel Archimbaud, Silvia Bidegain, Joëlle Bouvier, Marie-France Delieuvin, Dominique Dupuy, Rick Merril, Régis Obadia, Abou Lagraa, Alvaro Restrepo et les étudiants de l’école supérieure du CNDC promotions 2000-2002 et 2001-2003 Grégory Alliot, Orin Camus, Marie Cassat, Hafiz Dhaou, Amala Dianor, Gabriel Galindez, Emile Josse, Jazmin Londono Castaneda, Aïcha M'Barek, Stéphanie Pignon, Rolando Rocha, Céline Roussel, Yeugueni Vakarin, Aurélie Vandevelde, Hamza Aloui, Damiano Bigi, Estelle Delcambre, Ivan Fatjo, Shimrit Golan, Noélia Goldberg, Sébastien Ly, Johanna Mandonnet, Aurélien Mangata, Africa Manso Asensio, Jun Hee Park, Ana Popovic, Anne-Laure Rondel, Javier Torres Nino

Production / Coproduction of the video work : Farid Rezkallah (production déléguée)

Our videos suggestions
03:38

Yvette Chauviré

Fokine, Michel (France)

  • Add to playlist
03:01

Hard to Be Soft

Doherty, Oona (France)

  • Add to playlist
31:26

Montpellier, le saut de l'ange

Bagouet, Dominique (France)

  • Add to playlist
02:02

Odile Duboc, une conversation chorégraphique

Duboc, Odile (France)

  • Add to playlist
02:12

Odile Duboc, une conversation chorégraphique

Duboc, Odile (France)

  • Add to playlist
01:18:58

Heroes

Huynh, Emmanuelle (France)

  • Add to playlist
11:06

To Hang

  • Add to playlist
19:41

Reine-Claude

Juvanon du Vachat, Martin (France)

  • Add to playlist
03:32

BGirls

  • Add to playlist
03:04

BGirls

  • Add to playlist
33:46

Talking In/To Myself

  • Add to playlist
53:55

My Country Music

Hay, Deborah (France)

  • Add to playlist
01:30:03

Fragments

Bouvier, Joëlle (France)

  • Add to playlist
16:18

Wunsch

Biondi, José (France)

  • Add to playlist
18:11

Thesis in Bodinier

Giordano, Raffaella (France)

  • Add to playlist
47:49

Hurry Up !

Bouvier, Joëlle (France)

  • Add to playlist
11:41

Blue Lady Duo Carlson-Saarinen

Carlson, Carolyn (France)

  • Add to playlist
11:37

Arcana : Density 21.5

Carlson, Carolyn (France)

  • Add to playlist
04:52

Commedia

Carlson, Carolyn (France)

  • Add to playlist
Our themas suggestions

Animal Kingdom, participant's words

Exposition virtuelle

fr/en/

Noé Soulier Rethinking our movements

Exposition virtuelle

fr/en/

CHRISTIAN & FRANÇOIS BEN AÏM – VITAL MOMENTUM

Exposition virtuelle

fr/en/

Vlovajobpru company

Exposition virtuelle

fr/en/

40 years of dance and music

Exposition virtuelle

fr/en/

Indian dances

Discover Indian dance through choreographic creations which unveil it, evoke it, revisit it or transform it!

Parcours

fr/en/

The “Nouvelle Danse Française” of the 1980s

In France, at the beginning of the 1980s, a generation of young people took possession of the dancing body to sketch out  their unique take on the world. 

Parcours

fr/en/

Body and conflicts

A look on the bonds which appear to emerge between the dancing body and the world considered as a living organism.

Parcours

fr/en/

James Carlès

Exposition virtuelle

fr/en/

les ballets C de la B and the aesthetic of reality

Exposition virtuelle

fr/en/

Meeting with literature

Collaboration between a choreographer and a writer can lead to the emergence of a large number of combinations. If sometimes the choreographer creates his dance around the work of an author, the writer can also choose dance as the subject of his text.

Parcours

fr/en/

When reality breaks in

How does choreographic works are testimonies of the world? Does the contemporary artist is the product of an era, of its environment, of a culture?

Parcours

fr/en/

States of the body

Explanation of the term « State of the body » when it’s about dance.

Parcours

fr/en/

Improvisation

 Discovery of improvisation’s specificities in dance. 

Parcours

fr/en/

Pantomimes

Presentation of Pantomimes in the different types of dance.

Parcours

fr/en/

The American origins of modern dance: [1930-1950] from the expressive to the abstract

Parcours

fr/en/

30 YEARS OF GRENADE

Exposition virtuelle

fr/en/

Charles Picq, dance director

Exposition virtuelle

fr/en/

Black Dance

James Carlès, dancer and choreographer and specialist of Afro-American dance, evokes the origin of current-day urban dances. From Africa to the United States via Europe, he emphasizes their hybrid style and puts their social and political dimension into perspective. A myriad of videos, photos, illustrations and additional resources complement this interview.

Webdoc

fr/en/

Why do I dance ?

Social dances, anti-establishment, protest dances, rhythms or identities, rituals or pleasures... There are a myriad of reasons for dancing and a myriad of points of view. A webdoc to discover, enhanced with extracts from performances and accounts from amateurs... all the right reasons for dancing!

Webdoc

fr/en/
By accessing the website, you acknowledge and accept the use of cookies to assist you in your browsing.
You can block these cookies by modifying the security parameters of your browser or by clicking onthis link.
I accept Learn more