Huddle (1961)  
Scramble (1971)
Choreography by Simone Forti
Extracts remodelled by the Groupe d’intervention chorégraphique (Association Filigrane, La Roche-sur-Yon), coordinator Maryline Charneau, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2015) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Passionate about improvisation and methods for instantaneous composition of movement, the Groupe d’intervention chorégraphique, set up in 2003 and based in La Roche-sur-Yon, is made up of amateurs aged 38 to 66. Advocating in their practice, the notions of experimentation and pleasure of playing, authenticity and spontaneity, for the past two years the participants have entrusted their workshops to Claire Filmon, Simone Forti’s collaborator for the past twenty years. The group has received the support of the Grand R, scène nationale de La Roche-sur-Yon. 

The project
Wishing to further and refine its improvisation practice around the issues of “living” and “dancing together”, the group asked Claire Filmon, who has transmitted Simone Forti’s works for the past ten years, to examine in depth the history of improvisation and its artistic, pedagogical, philosophical and political stakes. The pieces Huddle and Scramble, both belonging to the Dance Constructions period, in Simone Forti’s own words, are explored in various contexts, indoors and outdoors alike, as close as possible to the choreographer’s adventurous spirit. 

The choreographer
A strong personality of the American scene, on the “happening” side, Simone Forti, following visual arts studies, made a name for herself in the years 1960-1970 with performances such as See Saw (1960), where two people swing on a see saw, the slightest movements of one affecting those of the other, and Rollers (1960), with Robert Morris and Yvonne Rainer, she sings on wooden pallets fitted with rollers. Close to the Judson Dance Theater, an avant-garde movement that emerged in the 1960s in New York, she explored in turn the movements of animals and the relationship between gesture and word. Among her emblematic pieces are Huddle (1961), on the subject of the group as a living organism through the climbing of a mountain of dancers, Sleep Walkers, inspired from the behaviour of pink flamingos and polar bears and Scramble (1971), a swirling movement phenomenon. She has collaborated with Steve Paxton and, in 1986, created the Simone Forti & Troupe, with which she produces danced portraits of landscapes, mixing gestures and texts. 

SIMONE FORTI is a dancer, choreographer, artist and writer based in Los Angeles. She started dancing in 1955 with improvisational dance pioneer Anna Halprin. In 1959 she moved to New York, where she studied composition, particularly John Cage’s work, in the Merce Cunningham Studio with musicologist Robert Dunn and familiarised herself with random practice. She met Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton and actively collaborated to initial happenings, mainly with Robert Whitman, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow while conceiving her first minimalist conceptual dance/constructions. In 1961 she presented her Dance Constructions, which influenced the emergence of the Judson Dance Theatre, which revolutionised dance in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout her prolific career Forti took an interest in the study of the movements of animals and the dynamics of circling, as well as in the natural, geographical or historical ‘portraits’ of specific venues that she created with the group Forti & Troupe that she founded in 1986. She collaborated with musicians/composers such as Charlemagne Palestine and Peter Van Riper. Since the early 1980s, Forti has been performing News Animations, a blend of movements and spoken words referring to world news. She received many awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 and the Yoko Ono Lennon Award for Courage for the Arts in 2011. Today Forti continues teaching and performing worldwide while inventing original devices to explore movement. Her work has been featured at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the MoMa in New York, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and the Louvre Museum in Paris among others.

From live stage images to life in images, the  director and video artist Karim Zeriahen seems to have found the  shortest way. Since the beginning of the 90s, when he worked in close  relationship with choreographer Philippe Decouflé, he learned how to put  the art of stage in motion, contemporary dance most of the time. Karim  Zeriahen then starts a fruitful collaboration with Montpellier based  choreographer Mathilde Monnier. Stop, Videlilah, day of night, short  films adapted from her stage creations. Each time, Karim Zeriahen's   camera takes over the place with movement, the body language is not  frozen but magnified. Choreographer Herman Diephuis also joins this  gallery of dancing portraits. Documentaries on figures such like Albert  Maysles or Hubert de Givenchy and from Joe Dalessandro to Paul  Morrissey, he sets a signature, a camera always in action with  confidence.

Today the director goes further with a new  project and tracks the subtle movements of the body language beyond the  physical appearance. A collection of living portraits as unique pièces  reminding us of the master portraitists of renaissance. These living  natures consists in filming the subject in a certain amount of time,  almost still, with signs of respiration, eye blinks, as if it were  posing for a painting. They are then displayed on a flat screen with a  memory card. With this collection starting, Karim Zeriahen, with his  documentary and artist vision, interrogates himself about the virtual  world filled with images. By taking a pause, and his models with him, he  questions the way we look at things, the way we look at life.

Source: Philippe Noisette 

En savoir plus: www.karimzeriahen.com

Amateur Dance and Repertory is a companion program to amateur practice beyond the dance class and the technical learning phase. Intended for groups of amateur dancers, it opens a space of sharing for those who wish to deepen a practice and a knowledge of the dance in relation to its history.

Laurent Barré
Head of Research and Choreographic Directories
Anne-Christine Waibel
Research Assistant and Choreographic Directories
+33 (0)1 41 83 43 96
danse-amateur-repertoire@cnd.fr

Source: CN D

More information: https://www.cnd.fr/en/page/323-danse-en-amateur-et-repertoire-grant-programme