Faits et gestes explores different status we can give to movements: actions orientated towards a practical goal, abstract choreographic sequences and communicative gestures. The dancers focus on the multiple ways in which gestures can suggest movements: preparing for a movement to come, aiming for absent targets, indicating, pointing, selecting or transferring aspects of other movements. These movements are not self-sufficient, they refer to something beyond themselves. Even when what they are referring to is unknown, the fact that they call for something else remains present. It is these various ways of calling for through movement that are unfolded on stage.

There is a parallel between this research and the pieces by Johan Jakob Froberger present in Faits et gestes. They are funeral orations that have an explicitly rhetorical dimension. They recreate the articulation and even some of the figures of speech of verbal language. As our gesture phrases, these musical figures do not have a defined signification, but always seems to call for meaning. Counterpoint, another major field of research in baroque music, is also present in the piece through a work on improvisation.

In the group sequences, the movement materials are set, but their order, orientation and length as well as the relationships with the other dancers are improvised. The composition is not designed from the outside but emerges from the choices made by each dancers based on different set of rules, creating an internal choreography that has its own structure.

Born in Paris in 1987, Noé Soulier studied at the National Ballet School of Canada and PARTS in Brussels. He received a master degree in philosophy at La Sorbonne University (Paris IV) and took part in Palais de Tokyo’s residency program: Le Pavillon.
 

In 2010, he won the first prize of the competition Danse Élargie, organized by Le Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and Le Musée de la Danse with the trio « Little Perceptions » in which he started an ongoing research on ways of defining movement. With the solo « Movement on Movement » (2013), he dissociates gestures from speech to question how they collaborate to create meaning.
 

In 2014, he explored the syntax of ballet vocabulary with « Corps de ballet » for the CCN – Ballet de Lorraine. In « Movement Materials » (2014) and « Removing » (2015), he develops further the research initiated with Little perceptions on the perception and interpretation of movement.
 

In October 2016, he publishes « Actions, mouvements et gestes », a choreographic research that takes the form of a book, with the press of the Centre national de la danse.

In July 2020, he has taken over the direction of the Centre national de danse contemporaine d’Angers (CNDC).
 

Source: CNDC Angers

www.cndc.fr

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