In Le Havre, where at least half its population are immigrants, Cécile Raynal-Diarra’s African dance workshop finds a special echo. This young French woman lived in Africa for a long time, then deciding, on her return to France, to pass on what she had learnt there. Designed in four parts, Christian Zarifian’s film testifies to the attraction of cultural exchanges that are expressed through this experience of movement.

Allers-Retours is filmed in a single place: the dance studio. Every Wednesday, students of varying origins learn African dance to the beat of the percussions played there. This class is, as often, solely attended by women. Each part of the documentary corresponds to a specific moment in the workshop filmed over the year. With time, the camera is forgotten and the students speak, explaining why they chose to follow these classes. Each one gives their impressions: seeking another state, losing control over your body, being in the music or dancing for others, all these form part of the discoveries of dance. But this learning process also shows the interest each student takes in questioning their own roots, by confronting a different culture or by seeking to regain their own.

Source : Irène Filiberti

Cécile Raynal was born in 1966 and lives and works in Normandy.

She graduated from Toulouse School of Fine Arts in 1991 with a DNSEP (French Higher Diploma in Plastic Arts). Cécile Raynal was a visual artist and dancer for many years but, since 2008, has focused exclusively on sculpture. A free spirit, perpetually moving between two centres of interest which are different in texture but are both driven by the body, Cécile Raynal-Diarra, who is influenced by European and African cultures, adores defying paradoxes and complementarities to spark encounters.

“Cécile Raynal is the author of a certain form of absolute art where immersion into alterity already unveils the work. The plasticity of this experimentation is actually one of the artist’s materials, in the same vein as the clay itself”. (Florence Calame-Levert, Doctor of Ethnology, Director of the Evreux Museum of Arts, History and Archaeology).

Source : Cécile Raynal

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http://www.cecileraynal.net/