Nal Boa [Look at me]

An extract remodelled by GrOup (Besançon, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), a collective coordination, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2017/2018) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

Transmission by Jean-Antoine Bigot.

Presented on 26 May 2018, Les 2 Scènes, Théâtre Ledoux, Besançon.

The piece when it was created

Firstly produced 30 September 2010 at the City Hall Square in Séoul (South Korea) during the international festival Hanmadang Gwacheong

Choreography: Jean-Antoine Bigot and Anne Le Batard

Piece for 7 performers:  Jean-Antoine Bigot, Soo-Bin Kang, Jae-Young Park, Corinne Pontana, Rolando Rocha, Ji In Gook, Han-Sol Yu

Music: (live) Pascal Ferrari, Rui Owada

Original duration: 50 minutes

The group

GrOup (Besançon, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté)

The association grOup is the result of the initiative of participants in the Transmission project, initiated by the Scène nationale de Besançon and led from 2012 to 2015 by Caroline Grosjean. Forced to admit that this adventure would come to an end, several participants concerned themselves with the future. This initiative found an echo over and beyond the Transmission members. Today, seventy amateur dancers meet up regularly for the projects, training courses and experimentation opportunities proposed.

The project

The grOup members share great curiosity for the various approaches to dance and, in particular, for what can nurture each individual’s physical imagination. When the association was set up, the aim was to be able to meet up all together around a long-term, large-scale project, while retaining the regular, professional coaching of one or more choreographic artists. Occupying public space and especially the street is another major aim of the group’s current members. This has already taken the form of several performances in Besançon’s public spaces: some members danced to Christophe Tarkos’s poetry (BIP project), others danced with piles of clothes and paper, drawing inspiration from Anna Halprin’s Parades and Changes, while others gathered at the Frac in a work by Suzanna Fritscher. 

ANNE LE BATARD After a career as a dancer (companies Karin Vyncke in Brussels and Georges Appaix in Marseilles), she founded the company Ex Nihilo in 1994. She explores the relationship between the dancer and dance to space and to others as well as the spectator’s place. She has developed a specific writing form, focused on listening and responsiveness, fed by long periods of immersion and research in public space. Her approach to dance is closely linked to a practice of the photographic image and video. 

With JEAN-ANTOINE BIGOT , they have written about fifteen choreographic pieces, ranging from duets to com- positions for 15 or 17 dancers. They teach and train in France and abroad the repertoire
and the technique of the company through workshops and specific creations. 

Ex Nihilo Company Website

avril 2020

Film director, Ivan Chaumeille, has worked with choreographer Dominique Brun a long time, most notably in the production of + One (2014), a creative documentary scheduled as part of the festival “Vidéodanse”, in the editing of which Rafaël Gubitsch participated; he filmed and edited two versions of Afternoon of a faun, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinski for the film Le Faune -un film ou la fabrique de l’archive. He also carried out interviews, and devised and formulated the ROM and video dimensions of the DVD (2007). He shot video sequences for the show Medea-Stimmen by Virginie Mirbeau, created at Festival Les Météores CNN du Havre (2008). With a background in philosophy, he produced a creative documentary entitled Avec François Châtelet, un voyage différentiel (2010) for the collection “À Contre-temps” in co-production with Groupe Galactica, Mosaïque films and Canal 15.