HOK solo pour ensemble is a choreographic work constructed to the score of Hoketus, a musical piece created in 1975- 1977 by Louis Andriessen.

Energetic, brutal and hypnotic, the music of Hoketus is seemingly sourced in the sounds of hard rock and the works of Igor Stravinsky. Two identical groups of musicians face each other onstage using the medieval musical technique called Hocket. The word “hocket” first appeared in the early 14th century, based on the onomatopoeic sound hok, meaning a sharp interruption or a shock. The pulses and the rhythms involved in this minimalist score create a fascinating, powerful world.

Alban Richard, an artist in residence at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, began in his earliest pieces to research a sort of kneading of the body within his dancers, inflating and over crossing their physical strata, bursting bubbles,while accentuating their individual rhythms.

For this creation at the CCN – Ballet de Lorraine, he has created a solo for the ensemble. The dancers’ bodies form a unique, polymorphous mass.
Closely bonded to Andriessen’s music, HOK solo pour ensemble is a work driven by a ferocious energy, its rhythm charging from body to body.

source : CCN - Ballet de Lorraine

Alban Richard discovered contemporary dance while he was pursuing literary and musical studies. From the late 1990s, he worked for various choreographers such as Odile Duboc, Olga de Soto and Rosalind Crisp.

In 2000, Alban Richard founded Ensemble l'Abrupt for which he created about thirty very different pieces, always in close interaction with a musical work whose writing and formal structure he questioned. Consequently, each creation opens up new research and a new performance style, setting itself apart from the previous one. The way he develops his shows, using restricted improvisations to devise the work directly on stage, encourages the performers to become creators of their own dance.

Alban Richard has collaborated with the Alla francesca ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, the Ensemble intercontemporain, IRCAM and the Cairn, Instant Donné and Alternance ensembles, as well as with composers Arnaud Rebotini, Sebastian Rivas, Erwan Keravec, Jérôme Combier, Laurent Perrier, Raphaël Cendo, Robin Leduc, Paul Clift, Wen Liu and Matthew Barnson.

A prolific choreographer, Alban Richard is regularly invited by ballets and companies, both internationally (Canada, Lithuania, Norway) and in France, to create commissioned works.

Since 2015 he has been artistic director of the centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie, with a project based on both his practice as an author and on connecting with the territory and its inhabitants.

More information : https://ccncn.eu/english/

Since acquiring the CCN title in 1999, the Centre Chorégraphique National - Ballet de Lorraine has dedicated itself to supporting contemporary choreographic creation. As of July 2011 the organization is under the general and artistic direction of Petter Jacobsson.
The CCN – Ballet de Lorraine and its company of 26 dancers is one of the most important companies working in Europe, performing contemporary creations while retaining and programming a rich and extensive repertory, spanning our modern history, made up of works by some of our generations most highly regarded choreographers.
The CCN functions as an art center and venue for multiple possibilities in the fields of research, experimentation and artistic creation. It is a platform open to many different disciplines, a space where the many visions of dance of today may meet. 

More information : http://ballet-de-lorraine.eu