Along an unpredictable path, discrete yet rich in encounters, with a nod to contemporary dance and theatre in France from the 1970s up to today, and for an archive exhibition at the Médiathèque of the Centre National de la Danse, on 1 April Lila Greene invites us for an evening full of surprises.

Photos, films, fantasies and farandoles recall the clashes that lead us to find the unexpected in unusual places and often at unreasonable hours, to discover the resonances of a visible invisible, for the simple pleasure of a change from the day-to-day.

Sequence

John and Doris Dreem

Mark Tompkins and Lila Greene

Lecture by Jean-Daniel Magnin

Théâtre Autarcique, Festival de Nancy, 1976 

Lecture by Denise Luccioni

Faut tout ça, Les Frères Jacques
with Levent Beskardes, Lila Greene, Pascale Houbin

Lecture by Odile Rouquet

DVD extract from Approches ancestrales by Lila Greene, in the Recherche en mouvement collection
Images of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen: Gabriele Sparwasser

Film on weightlessness

Images: Ki Productions, 1994
Dance: Kitsou Dubois, Lila Greene

Mère / Fille

Naomi Fall and Lila Greene,
homage to Yano, extracts, 2004

Lecture by Jean Jourdheuil

Film Éloge à Goury, extracts from shows choreographed by Lila Greene with costumes by Goury:

- Pandora suite, 1982
Images: Alain Longuet

Dance: Sandra Cordero, Zaza Disdier, Kitsou Dubois, Lila Greene

- Démons, 1984
Images: Alain Longuet
Dance: Jacky Azencott, Gérard Gourdot, Lila Greene
Music: Lucien Rozengart

- Striptiz, 1986
Production: Bertrand Merino
Dance: Paula Klein

Music: Hector Zazou

-L’Inquiet épicier,1988
Images: Centre Pompidou management
Dance: Jean Guizerix, Wilfride Piollet, Lila Greene
Sound arrangement: Daniel Deshayes

- Le Vol de la carpe, 1997, collective homage to Yano in Saint-Florent le Vieil
Images: Alain Longuet

Dance: Lila Greene
Music: Marie-Laure Weil-Reynal
Text: The Raven, Edgar Alan Poe

- L’Heure où l’on ne savait rien, 2001-2002
Images: Gabriele Sparwasser

Dance: Alain Alberganti,
 Marion Baë, Mathias Dou, Pascale Houbin, Xavier Monserrat
Music: Ryoanji, Cage

- Régénérations, 2006
Images: Martine André

Dance: Madeleine Attal, Naomi Fall, 
Lila Greene, Christel Touret

Music: In an Autumn Garden, Takemitsu

- De l’esprit d’escalier, 2004
Images: Marc Ginot

Music: Ghislain Hervet
Performance: Hélène de Bissy,
 Lila Greene, Patty Hannock

Texts: Sonnet XVIII, ‘Baise m’encor’, Louise Labé; Blasons anatomiques du corps féminin : Le Corps, anonymous, 16th century

Blasons anatomiques du corps féminin: La Larme
J.N. d’Arles, 16th century, spoken by Luc Sabot 

Song Baise m’encor
Sonnet by Louise Labé,
music by Ghislain Hervet

Musicians: Ghislain Hervet
, Anne le Pape

Film in homage to Pierre Doussaint,

Sissan Dêdo

Updating: September 2014 

Born in 1949 in the United States, Lila Greene trained in drama and numerous contemporary dance techniques in California and New York, where she also took part in the performance and choreography of various shows. Arriving in France in 1975, she began to teach contemporary dance and dance and drama improvisation. As well as choreographing several solos during this time, she worked with American artists such as Harry Sheppard and Mark Tompkins, with whom she danced until 1982 in a long series of duets, especially as part of the collective Théâtre Autarcirque and their company, called Productions Lima Dreem. Combining dance and drama, humour and artistic experimentation, they appeared in particular at the Festival Off in Avignon and the Danse Festival in Aix-en-Provence, and above all in Parisian venues such as La Forge, Théâtre 13 and the studio Théâtre d'En Face.

At the same time, Lila Greene worked with the Japanese choreographer Hideyuki Yano, whose preferred performer she was between 1976 and 1986. Her collaboration with Yano also made its mark, and she paid several tributes to the choreographer during the special events organised in his memory (such as the evening dedicated to him at the Saint-Florent le Vieil festival in 1997) and through pieces of choreography (such as Régénérations : pour Yano in 2006).

Lila Greene set up the company Sunsets in 1984, where continued to develop a cross-disciplinary approach, working, for example, from texts by Gherasim Luca in her pieces Arrêts sur la carpe (1997) and le Chant de la carpe (1998), as well as collaborating with the artist Tony Soulié on these same pieces. She also provided the choreography for several directors during the 1990s, in particular Jean Jourdheuil and Jean-Francois Peyret (several pieces by the German author Heiner Müller, for which she was an actor and performer), Jean-Marc Bourg, Jean-Claude Fall and even Luc Sabot, for whom she performed in two of his directorial pieces in Montpellier.

Lila Greene also chooses exterior creation spaces, such as the subterranean banks of the Canal Saint-Martin for Démons  (1984), the heliport of the Lariboisière hospital for L'État des mouches (1985) and even old private mansions in Montpellier for l'Esprit d'escalier (2004), among others.

In addition, her research on the body and movement have led her to become interested in French sign language (in which she went on to train and subsequently work with deaf comedians), the analysis of movement (she has led placements and works alongside Nathalie Schulmann and Odile Rouquet, with whom she created a collection of DVDs on the somatic approaches linked to the arts domain), as well as non-Western approaches. For example, she obtained a degree in 2001 from the Université de Montpellier in Chinese language and civilisation, allowing her to broaden some of her art projects such as her piece entitles L'heure où l'on ne savait rien (2001-2002). Through all these years she has continued a great deal of educational work, leading numerous dance and theatre workshops which have now taken her teaching to Africa and Brazil, where she provides the work of the American foundation she set up in 2003 (the eeg-cowles Foundation).

Updated: September 2014

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).