In just over twenty years, Akram Khan Company has established itself as one of the foremost innovative dance companies in the world. Embracing an artistic vision that both respects and challenges Indian kathak form and contemporary dance, Akram Khan has created a substantial body of critically acclaimed work that ranges from classical and modern solos to artist-to-artist collaborations and company productions. The Company has a major international presence and enjoys busy tours that reach out to many cultures and peoples across the globe.

 Alain Michard is a choreographer and a visual artist. 

Photo - Emilie Saubestre

Founded in 1972 by Roland Petit, the Ballet National de Marseille is an internationally renowned dance company. In 2014, Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten succeeded Marie-Claude Pietragalla (1998-2004) and Frédéric Flamand (2005-2013) as artistic directors. Their ambitions are based on two main themes, “the body in revolt”, which deals with the expression and presence of dance in society and “the corps du ballet”, which focuses on research and the development of a new form of contemporary ballet.

Since the first event in 1984, the Biennale de la danse has aimed at breaking down stylistic and geographical borders in order to bring dance in all its forms to as large an audience as possible. Artistic director since 2012, Dominique Hervieu has turned the Biennial into a festival which celebrates creativity and has developed programmes which have encouraged diversity to flourish.

With an exceptional repertoire and accompanied by dancers faithful to the poetics of her gestures, the choreographer continues her creative approach. Each year, the Carolyn Carlson Company carries at least two major projects, from premiere and transmission of repertoire pieces to the most prestigious ballet corps, while continuing to tour the choreographer's performances around the world.

Directed since January 2017 by Maud Le Pladec, the Orléans National Choreographic Center poses the question of audiences as its central issue. Creation in all its forms, in a transversal manner, runs through the project in all its dimensions with all audiences. CCNO is about sharing, exploring with people around, before and after. Workshops Monday after work, Saturday brunch, workshops, festivals, performances, public openings, conferences, participatory creations, resonate with the creative work of artists in residence at the CCNO or programmed at the Théâtre d'Orléans.

The National Choreographic Center of Caen in Normandy is a space for shared projects that questions the world in which we live, a place of sensitivity where dance is at the heart of an artistic, political and civic vision. It is a center for creation, production and distribution of choreographic pieces, a resource center for training and research. It is a shared place, a place open to artistic creation, to contemporary repertoire. It is a place accessible to all, where people come to see, do and talk.

In June 2009, Mourad Merzouki was appointed director of the CCN de  Créteil and Val-de-Marne (National Choreography Centre), where he has  developed his vision of dance as “an open window on the world”. Since  the creation of the Käfig Company in 1996, the choreographer has been  able to expand the language of hip-hop by working at where multiple  disciplines intersect: circus, martial arts, contemporary dance and  more. His pieces are currently touring the world.

With a background in hiphop and all its influences, we represent a new generation of choreographers. Our driving force—dance, as well as art brut—draws on self-taught skills and takes on a universal dimension that informs our values. It is dance that allows us to forge a cross-disciplinary dialog with other aesthetics and to be in touch with reality. We affirm the use of making (faire) as a way of relating to the world, as well as a method of appropriating, through action and reaction, our immediate environment and of infusing it, whenever possible, with desire, poetry, justice, imagination, joy, sharing, and community…

Gathered together, enriched by our differences and by our individual artistic approaches, we have been able to sweep aside the residual modalities of writing specific to our respective fields of aesthetics. We thus invite you to discover our worlds and partake in the auteur dance that fits perfectly within the panorama of contemporary dance.

Directed by Yuval Pick since 2011, the CCN Rillieux-la-Pape is a place of manufacture and meeting dedicated to dance and artistic creation. With a permanent company, he places the performer at the heart of his action. His project focuses on different themes: the production of Yuval Pick's creations and their distribution, the public meetings to discover the work of artists in residence, shows or highlights, a training program for professional dancers, artistic action projects and amateur practice workshops.

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. 

CCNN – Centre Chorégraphique National de Nantes was directed by Claude Brumachon from 1992 to 2015. As a choreographer of the human spirit and a explorer of the body, he has constantly, along with his parner Benjamin Lamarche, created and nourished strong relations to the audience. Since January the 1st of 2016, Ambra Senatore is the director of CCNN. As her creativity takes source in humanity, she has imagined a place where life would flow, where everyone could feel right : artists of course, but citizens and dance amators as well, as all cultural partners of the territory too. A place filled with creativity and openness, as an invitation to a trip, to invent and share, together.

The Company James Carles work to the valuation of dance forms from the social traditions and popular in the West. In his creations, the company tends to confront various choreographic cultures to other art forms. It also has operations around the research, conservation, transmission, distribution and public awareness.

An international platform dedicated to the promotion, research and pedagogy of screendance and other hybrid moving image practices that explore choreography, somatic practices and/or movement studies. The centre produces the annual International Video Dance Festival of Burgundy and its research conference each spring.

In the place du Trocadéro, in the 16th arrondissement (district) of Paris, the Chaillot National Theatre is one of the capital's most prestigious venues. Since 2008 it has focussed mainly on dance, but remains open to all kinds of art forms and is distinguished as a theatre which values creativity. The choreographer Didier Deschamps became the director in July 2011.

Christian and François Ben Aïm began collaborating in 1997 when they co-created their first piece, and went on to form their own company, CFB 451, in 1999. To date they have choreographed some twenty pieces together. Working in tandem as brothers and partners, Christian and François Ben Aïm have developed a sensitive style of contemporary dance that is both poetic and physical. Their creations lay bare our ambivalence, weaknesses and relationships with others to reveal the different facets of our humanity.

La Baraka company was founded in 1997 by Abou Lagraa. Hailed by audiences and professionals alike, the company has performed on the biggest stages in France and abroad, in particular in Germany, Italy, Algeria, the USA, Eastern Europe and Asia. Today, the company boasts a repertoire of around 23 pieces and is very active in promoting dance to the general public.

An arts centre for dance, offering constant movement between creation,  dissemination, inheritance and formation, the Centre national de la  danse is also an indispensable source of information, providing advice  for dance professionals and access to choreographic culture. An  associate department of the BnF (National Library of France), it  preserves and presents unique heritage and documentary collections on  the history of dance and contemporary creation.

The Centre national de danse contemporaine - Angers is a national  choreography centre (CCN). Its artistic and teaching plan, implemented  by Robert Swinston, director of the CNDC since January 2013, is defined  from its 5 main aims: the creation of new works, artist-in-residence  programmes, the development of new line-ups, publicity, and dance  training in association with the École supérieure (French higher  education establishment).

The Arcosm company was created in 2001 and is currently co-directed by Thomas Guerry, a dancer and choreographer and Camille Rocailleux, a percussionist, pianist player and composer. The company main objective is to build bridges between different artistic disciplines and languages; music, dance and singing are the root of this artistic approach. The main elements of the human voice (rhythm, melody, timbre and tone) are closely linked to the musical world, and give vividness and theatricality to the characters. Photo Samuel Poncet

For more than fifteen years, the Vilcanota company has been saying quietly what others think out loud ... It does it in its own way with humans of a singular banality who dance, talk, run ... of ceasing to express their joyous human condition ... without ever forgetting that they are above all poets of the absurd!

Yvann Alexandre has emerged since his debut in '93, as the representative of an abstract dance, very premeditated, a bearer of elegance, far from the performances and improvisations of those of his generation, and with a particular attachment to writing. movement and its transmission to the public. Attentive to go back and forth between professionals, amateurs and schoolchildren, he deploys his work as creator of Pays de la Loire abroad (Quebec, Germany, Argentina). With his own company but also as a guest choreographer (CCN Ballet Nancy, Norwest Tanzcompagnie, ...), he weaves a policy of exchange, meetings, training and choreographic culture. His work addresses a reflection around the very subject of dance, with fidelity to the notion of line. His precise gesture is full of details and is organized as a calligraphy of the intimate, where the movement constantly seeks human material.

The Dachverband Tanz Deutschland represents the official, nation-wide platform for artistic dance in Germany. Founded in 2006 with the protagonists’ awareness that dance must speak with one voice in the German political landscape, the Dachverband Tanz currently operates as a network for the most important stakeholders of dance. 40 associations, institutions and personalities represent approximately 3000 prominent multipliers (choreographers, ensemble directors, ballet and dance educators, dance scientists) with whom an estimated 10,000 artists, educators and academics are connected. With its numerous position papers, conferences and campaigns the Dachverband Tanz aims to strengthen the position of dance artists and dance workers and to enhance the visibility of dance in society.

Artistic director of Dame de Pic, choreographer and performer, Karine Ponties is the author of forty pieces including Every Direction Is North (Golden Mask for the best contemporary dance show in Russia), Holeulone (best dance show in French-speaking Belgium) and Brutalis (SACD prize). The universe of his creations is characterized by his sense of the absurd, his exploration of intimacy, the organic and human relationships.

 

 

 Photo by ©Andrea Messana

The Don Sen Folo association has been working since 2010, historically in the Kalaban Coro district in Bamako and today in the rural district of Bancoumana, on the issue of access to culture with the leitmotif that we cannot buy than what we know. We are convinced that Art and Culture can become the economic engines of the society of tomorrow, so we work to make our work as artists known and understood to our populations.

As part of our partnership with the Maison de la Danse, the BNP Paribas Foundation became interested in 2007 in an ambitious project conceived by Charles Picq. To both bring dance to a broader public and also to preserve, deepen understanding and promote the heritage of dance, the Foundation decided to join the Maison de la Danse and the Centre National de la Danse to launch the Numeridanse.tv website.

Created in 2014, Hangars Numériques is an association under the 1901 law which brings together different skills inherent in the field of interdisciplinary digital creation. It brings together videographers, dancers, musicians, sound and light technicians, computer scientists and photographers.

The purpose of the association is to promote development and research into creation; train, learn, acquire new know-how, but also pass on to others in a spirit of knowledge sharing and exchange between practices. In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

The association regularly supports various artistic and cultural projects: transdisciplinary festivals, artistic and cultural associative structures, emerging artists, private schools, resource centers, etc. In addition to this, you need to know more about it. Internally, the structure and its members develop many projects, organized around two artistic poles: image and music.

Its flagship project is the International Festival of Animated Dance which takes place in December in Reunion, supported by the Center for Research in Animated Dance. In addition to this, you need to know more about it. Ultimately, the association aims to promote international cultural exchanges between visual artists, dancers / choreographers and musicians.

Choreographer, teacher, talent scout recognized on national and international stages, Heddy Maalem decided, in 2017, to regain his creative freedom by putting an end to his choreographic company after several trips around the world with his creations (Black Spring, Le Sacre du printemps, Mais le Diable marche à nos côtés, Éloge du puissant royaume...). In the privacy of his studio and during many trips, he renews his relationship with the performers by conducting video research. He thus produced the film A l’étranger, portraits de danseurs and the Beautés collatérales collection.

Jaï Production was born in 2019 from a yearning to promote and produce Benin dancers and choreographs who, despite nearly non means, strive to create and perform tenaciously, with inventiveness, a prodigious energy and an undeniable talent. Chaos Elégant, by Beninese choreographer Arouna Guindo is our first production (2020-2021). 

Jaï Production aims to continue its process of identifying dancers and choreographers from this area of Africa and to highlight the abundant and promising choreographic activity that is unfolding on the continent. 

It is also about contributing to documenting, through research, creation and promotion of dance archives, the strengthening of the contemporary African choreographic field which has beeing going on for about ten years and in which Hip hop and urban dances occupy an significant place.

His artistic and professional career has been built thanks to projects at the meeting point of dance, performance, photography and video, by constantly enriching himself with protean, innovative and hybrid collaborations.

Through creation, Jérémy Tran attempts to capture, amplify and transform the energy and presence of the body - on the basis of choreographic and cinematographic research - in order to reveal its essences and instincts. He also pays great attention to the collective experience of creation and to the artist-works-spectator relationship, which he wishes to be sensitive, educational and generous.

Array

The K. Danse company is distinguished by the development of a contemporary choreographic writing based on a constant dialectic between the living body (lived) and the visual body (given to see or virtual).

Currently, Jean-Marc Matos (designer, choreographer), in partnership with several close collaborators, is working on the issues of writing interactive dramaturgies, in particular around projects with a participatory dimension that question the spectator-dancer-environment relationships (examples: Metaphorá, Narcissus Reflected, RCO, BodyFail).

Found of movement and dancers, of those exceptional moments where the gesture and the role collide, Michel Kelemenis bases his creations on the search for a balance between the abstract and the figurative. The choreographer is in demand with the ballets de l’Opéra de Paris, de l’Opéra du Rhin, the Ballet du Nord, the Ballet de Genève and de Marseilles for his style, which combines finesse and performance. On his initiative, KLAP Maison pour la danse, a 2000 m2 facility dedicated to creation and the choreographic culture, was opened in Marseilles in 2011.

Karine Saporta est également Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Officier des Arts et des lettres. La chorégraphe  a été à l’initiative de la création de l’Association des Centres chorégraphiques Nationaux dont elle a assuré la Présidence. Elle a été élue par deux fois, Présidente de la Commission Danse, vice-présidente  de la Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD). Après avoir assuré la direction du Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen  Basse-Normandie, elle retrouve la direction de la Compagnie Karine  Saporta laquelle prend résidence à la Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Aujourd’hui, cette figure emblématique  de la danse contemporaine française prolonge sa démarche de créatrice  dans le cadre d’un projet de transmission philosophique et  chorégraphique qu’elle mène, en particulier, en Normandie où sa  compagnie est actuellement implantée, avec Le Dansoir Karine Saporta et elle fonde également un Centre international pour l’art & la pensée en Normandie : « La Mue ». Le Centre de La Mue (en partenariat avec des collectivités, l’Université et la Caisse des  dépôts et consignations) a pour vocation les échanges artistiques et  intellectuels internationaux en Normandie.

Lalanbik was founded in 2014, in Reunion Island. It contributes to the valorization of actors and choreographics writings of Indian Ocean territories. Lalanbik implement online ressources tools : the first is its website, concerning the Indian Ocean Dance news, and the other one is its online video library, which brings contents about contemporary and traditional dance writings. Lalanbik works in partnership to lead its actions in favor of the widening of publics with : libraries, theatres, dance schools, schools and higher education.

In 1985, the present day Ballets de Monte-Carlo company was born, thanks to the drive of HRH Princess of Hanover, who wished to continue the long tradition of dance in Monaco. The arrival of Jean-Christophe Maillot in 1993 helped the company to gain prominence on the international stage with his world-renowned ballets and his policy of inviting other choreographers to collaborate.

Since November 2018, Ludovic Moreau has directed the Avant Seine / Théâtre de Colombes with a project reflecting the dynamism of current creation with the aim of mixing all generations and cultures. Each season is made up of around forty shows from all artistic disciplines, with an emphasis on young audiences, notably with the quarterly showcase Children first, dance and world cultures.

Since its creation, the Maison de la Danse has been aware of its responsibility in creating a legacy by implementing a politics of the image. Most of its shows are filmed by Charles Picq; a video collection is being built, featuring dance on an international level, in all its forms, genres and styles.

Thierry Malandain is a choreographer recognised for his unique vocabulary which draws its richness from a balance between contemporary and classical dance. He alternates between new and personal visions of works from the established repertoire and original creation. Since 1998 he has been the director and choreographer of the Centre Chorégraphique National de Biarritz and artistic director of the Temps d'Aimer festival in Biarritz.

Mille Plateaux, Centre Chorégraphique National La Rochelle, has been home to Olivia Grandville's new project since January 2022. Mille Plateaux aims to be a space for creation, experimentation and artistic innovation; it wishes to reflect the vitality and diversity of the contemporary scene, to be a house of choreographic cultures in the broad sense.

The French Ministry of Culture's mission is to make major cultural works accessible to as many people as possible. It conducts a policy of preservation, protection and development of cultural heritage, supports the creation and development of artistic practices and contributes to the development of the artistic and cultural education of children and young adults throughout their formal education.

Created in 1981 by George Frêche and Dominique Bagouet, the Festival Montpellier Danse is a major event for dance and choreography in France and around the world. Welcoming the most influential choreographers of the day but also young and upcoming talent every year, the festival aims to show all kinds of dance to the large audiences which visit the theatres: classical, contemporary, traditional.

Nacera Belaza created her company in 1989. Appointed Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, it is self-taught that she enters dance, developing a choreography which takes its source in an interior journey, a sensitive listening of the body, space and emptiness in itself. His journey, like a quest, tends to enhance the direct link between the dancer and the spectator, open to the infinite of the stage. Repetition of gesture, infinite slowness, stretching of time: Nacera Belaza's pieces all explore movement as one would explore a serene, deep and continuous breath. The Nacera Belaza Company presents its pieces internationally.

Created in 2011, the Nawel Oulad Company leads contemporary dance projects in close connection with the visual arts and the human sciences. The troupe unites around hybrid artistic projects, shows but also performances, installations, and films. The choreographic writing begins with an encounter with a subject, a landscape, a material, then the sensations, the words and the images are incorporated to give birth to movement and spatiality. The creations question our relationship to the world and to our history (collective and individual). In this approach, the company invests the stage but also places where it is not expected: the corner of a street, an abandoned building, a gallery, an apartment ... Convinced of the importance of art as a vector of social bond, the company offers workshops and meetings during the presentation of the pieces.

Orbe brings together programmers, designers, artists and scientists around the experimentation and implementation of new We design environments open and accessible to the widest public, offering a space for expression, sharing and even creation for their users . Orbe's research activity deals with the relationships between body and learning, motor skills and listening, gesture and creation. It takes the form of the implementation of open digital devices constituting veritable matrices of experiences. Within the studio or during workshops, the Orbe team performs augmented reality sound experiences, navigable maps or situated creation tools. The user becomes an interpreter, actor or even performer.

After 13 years as the artistic director of the CCN Havre Haute-Normandie, Hervé Robbe is continuing his adventure as an artist and teacher since January 2012 with Travelling & co. He experiments with a unique amalgamation of dance and the filmed image, creates artistic objects in multiple formats and spectacular forms for the performance space, films and art installations.

Since March 2015, the Centre chorégraphique national de Franche-Comté in Belfort has been directed by Héla Fattoumi and Éric Lamoureux, for which they created the project VIADANSE. Their project is laid in the prospect of a 3rd generation choregraphic center, revolving around a dynamic concept highlighting the circulation of projects and the building of networks, from Franche-Comté to Burgundy ; from the Grand Est to Switzerland and Europe.

WLDN is a project and a philosophy at the same time. The title references the renowned book Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American essayist, teacher, philosopher, naturalist and poet. This novel, published in 1854, influenced many schools of thought and served as a reference for those seeking to reconnect with basic values. Thoreau recounts his two years experience living independently in the middle of nature.

WLDN can be portrayed as a kind of ‘transcendental striptease’, which represents for me coming back to the fundamental essence and a simplifying of work, of stripping down, but also, back to the most elemental, even the most primordial aspects of performance in terms of dance, movement, and site. This simplicity can and does involve stage work and public space work but also includes productions of the kind of work that can easily be documented and published with the tools at hand which includes platforms such as social media : iphone, internet, facebook…

What is it in Thoreau’s action that can be mirrored in our changing cultural landscape with the contemporary tools we have in creating, recording, notating, publishing, dissemination ?