Choreography Myriam Gourfink
Text Éric Suchère
Concordan(s)e is a unique adventure, an encounter between a writer and a choreographer. According to the established principle, the two artists, who have never met before, observe each other and ask each other questions about what aroused their desire to create. Diving into their innermost creativity, a common and unique creation is presented, where the writer and choreographer reveal what they have learned and understood of this process, as an original extension of their own world. The audience thus become witnesses to this experience, which illustrates the complicity established between the two artists at every turn.

As a result, abstract suggestions evoke natural elements (rain, smoke, light phenomena) or artificial landscapes. These suggestions appear, are superimposed, mixed together. Elements of these suggestions are anticipated or recalled in different contexts by the voice of the reader or his recorded double and are propelled into space, moving apart into different configurations and with joint or separate trajectories from those of the dancer; conjunctions and separations manifested by the movements of the reader onstage.

Updating: September 2014 

Dancer & choreographer born in 1968.

The respiratory techniques of yoga are at the source of Myriam Gourfink’s endeavors. The idea is to seek after the inner urge that leads to movement. Guided by breath, the organization of bases of support is extremely exact, while the consciousness of space is shaky. The dance becomes slow, tedious within continuous time. This knowledge of movement and space makes possible the conception of choreographies without studio rehearsal. Thanks to what it suggests of a dance situation, there is no need to move in order to feel dance: the senses and the intellect reconstitute it.

As do musicians, she uses a symbolic writing system to compose the geometrical universe and poetic evolution of dance. Having studied Labanotation with Jacqueline Challet Haas, she undertook a quest, using this system as a point of departure, for the formalizing of her own compositional language. Each choreography encourages the performer to be conscious of his acts and of whatever passes through him. The scores activate his participation: he makes choices, carries out operations, confronts the unexpected within the written text, to which he responds instantly.

For certain projects, the scores include computer programs for the scrambling and real-time re-generation of the pre-written composition: the program runs the score in its entirety and generates millions of possible compositional sequences. The performer, via captor systems, guides the process of modification of the choreographic score, which they read on LCD screens. The computer setup is thus at the core of the space-time relationship. As the piece proceeds, it makes possible the structuring of as yet untried contexts.
 

A leading figure in choreographic research in France, but also the guest of numerous international festivals (springdance in New York City, the Künsten Arts festival in Brussels, the Festival de la Bâtie in Geneva, the Danças Na Cidade festival in Lisbon etc.), Myriam Gourfink was artist in residence at the IRCAM in 2004-2005 and at the national Fresnoy-studio for contemporary arts in 2005-2006. From january 2008 to march 2013 Myriam Gourfink has been director of the Program for Choreographic Research and Composition (PRCC) at the Royaumont Foundation. From 2012 to 2015 she is artist in residence at the Forum de Blanc-Mesnil.

Source : Myriam Gourfink website

More information :

http://www.myriam-gourfink.com/ 

Poet Éric Suchère's most notable publications includeL’Image différentielle (Éditions Voix), Le Motif albertine (MeMo), Lent (Le Bleu du Ciel), Le Souvenir de Ponge (CIPm), Résumé antérieur (Le Mot et le Reste), and Nulle part quelque, Brusque and Variable in 2014 by Éditions Argol. Éric Suchère is also a translator and has translated work by numerous Dutch, Italian and English poets, including Jack Spicer. As an art critic, he has worked with a number of journals, written for monographic catalogues and published two works on Gérard Gasiorowski. He teaches art theory and history at the École Supérieure d'Art et Design in Saint-Étienne.

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.).