The film "Traces" is an extract from the documentary "Maguy Marin, time to act" by David Mambouch.

"Maguy Marin, time to act" is available on Universcine and ARTE boutique

For the last several years I’ve been contemplating making a real film out of the piece May B, something more than just another video recording, rather a film in itself accompanied by a documentary that would retrace the history and experience of the different protagonists who have been involved with the work over the years. 

The piece and its long enduring history are inscribed in the memory of a moment in time, a moment in which different human stories have been swept along throughout the last 37 years, the births and death as well. The film is like a palimpsest of the sediment of tightly woven images and documents that evoke the slow process of superimposition, of restaging and repetition. To let loose the words and the voices of those who, both young and less so, have traversed the piece for the first time or the hundredth time. Of those who, from generation to generation and with each restaging, each performance and each new audience have made it possible for the part of themselves and their humanity inscribed and subtly intermixed with Beckett’s characters to emerge. 

To intertwine the elements of the artistic work that goes on in close contact with the performers who make the work possible, is a task that can only be undertaken by a director intimately acquainted with my work, an artist capable of delicately conveying the experience itself. David Mambouch, my son, was born at the same time as the piece was created in 1982. He grew up surrounded by the company and is an actor and director, an author and filmmaker. In 2012 he directed a cinematic adaptation of the company’s new piece Nocturnes and in 2014 after our collaboration for the piece Singspiele, our mutual artistic understanding regarding our approach to the work became self-evident and has continued to reinforce the on-going dialogue that has ensued between us. Through his sheer proximity to the piece and its successive performers (having also performed in it himself in 2014) he is in turn totally inside and totally outside of the piece. All throughout his childhood he has watched us live and work. 

Maguy Marin 

Source : Naïa Productions

Maguy Marin was born in Toulouse in 1951 and studied dance at the conservatory there before joining the Strasbourg Ballet. In 1970 she was accepted at Maurice Béjart’s school Mudra, where she stayed three years before becoming a soloist (for four seasons) with the Ballet of the 20th Century, under the direction of Maurice Béjart. A turning point would come at the end of this period seeing her shed all her previously held conceptions “allowing a multitude of creative choices, liberty and also constraints to emerge. Nothing was ever the same”. She also began questioning the body types idealized within the dance world, a subject that would become central in her work. “With Maurice Béjart the body was magnified. Youth, virtuosity, everything sparkled. And I had a problem with that. I asked myself what happened to all those other bodies, the ones that were infirm, misshapen or uncoordinated, but who managed to keep standing nonetheless.” 

Between 1980 and 1997 Maguy Marin was based at the Maison des arts in Créteil, with her company becoming an official Choreographic Centre in 1985. 

From 1998 until 2011 she directed the National Choreographic Centre in Rillieux-la-Pape. After which time the company once again became independent, setting up in Toulouse in order to continue their creative research. In 2015 the company moved again, this time to Sainte Foy-lès-Lyon, where they set up in an old carpentry factory. Their tenure there would allow them to continue to open up the immaterial space of that which is shared, something that obstinately seeks to make itself manifest while encouraging the unfolding of a new ambitious project: RAMDAM, AN ART CENTRE. It is a place of horizontal sharing, dedicated to hosting artists and audience members alike. It is also a place intent on facilitating an on-going exchange and continuous circulation between those conducting research, amateurs, students, spectators and volunteers; as well as creating bridges between different artistic practices, laboratories, places for public relations, education and reflection. 

- 1978: Grand Prix du Concours chorégraphique international de Bagnolet - 2003: Grand Prix de la danse du Syndicat de la critique for
Les applaudissements ne se mangent pas
- 2003: American Dance Festival Award 

- 2006: Special jury prize Syndicat de la critique for Umwelt
- 2008: Bessie Award for Umwelt presented at the Joyce Theater
- 2008: Grand Prix de la danse du Syndicat de la critique for Turba
- 2011: Prix Danza & Danza for “Best Contemporary Dance Piece » for Salves - 2016: Golden Lion, Venice Biennale 

More information : compagnie-maguy-marin.fr

 David Mambouch studied acting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre before becoming a full-time performer with the Théâtre National Populaire. Parallel to his work with the theatre company, he also performed in films and on television and began writing and directing his own theatrical work while also collaborating on the work of others. He also continued to develop his work as a scriptwriter, writing and directing several short films such as La Grande cause, directed in collaboration with Olivier Borle. As a solo artist or in collaboration with such companies as La Katet Compagnie, La Compagnie Parc, La Compagnie Scènes, La Compagnie Zélid and Le Théâtre Oblique among others, he began exploring multi-disciplinary work in which theatre, dance, music and film intermingle. He also collaborated with the Company Maguy Marin, first as a director for the creation of the film Nocturnes and then as a performer in restagings of May B and Umwelt. 

In 2014 he created the solo Singspiele in collaboration with Benjamin Lebreton and Maguy Marin. He also created the soundtrack for the performance. 

Source : Naïa productions

NAÏA PRODUCTIONS was founded in 2009 by Séverine Lathuillière and Philippe Aigle. NAÏA seeks to promote films that embody a reflection upon a world in accelerated mutation, and further, through the recounting of compelling stories, to share this particular kind of cinema with as large an audience as possible. Their projects all revolve around people who walk, who live, who run and who question their world. 

NAÏA PRODUCTIONS produced the animated film ADAMA, which was released in movie theatres the 21st of October 2015. In the film twelve-year-old Adama lives in an isolated village in West Africa. Stretching out beyond the cliffs is the “the World of Breath”, where the Nassaras reign and the children are forbidden from going. When Adama’s older brother Samba disappears, Adama defies his Elders’ interdiction and sets out to find him. With the utter determination of a child on the threshold of manhood he embarks on a quest that will take him to the North, beyond the seas, up to the battle lines of the First World War. We are in 1916. The film, much like its central story, has followed a singular course and continues to contribute to establishing ADAMA as a unique yet universal work of animated filmmaking.