Le monde privé de la danse
Conferences directed by Jérôme Mauche : watch the video of the meeting !
This event in the Poetry Platform series features exceptional guests: Marie- Thérèse Allier, the founder and director of La Ménagerie de Verre, a model institution for contemporary choreographic creation in France over the past thirty years; and Jérôme Bel, the most famous “revolutionary” and creative choreographer of his generation. “The Private World of Dance,” true to its polysemic title, will seek to relate life experiences to artistic propositions and creations, on levels both individual and institutional.
BIOGRAPHIES
Marie-Thérèse ALLIER
After years of training as a classical dancer and performing for the Marquis de Cuevas and the Ballets des Champs-Élysées, Marie-Thérèse Allier founded La Ménagerie de verre, an atypical and essential place in the French choreographic landscape. For thirty years, on a model that remains unrivaled, La Ménagerie de verre has been taking part in the elaboration of practices and knowledge at the crossroads between dance and performance, but also theater, contemporary art and literature. The institution hosts courses and master classes and has been particularly open to American choreographers in the tradition of minimal dance. La Ménagerie also accommodates shows, projects, studios and residences. As the place where the New French Dance emerged in the 1980s (Mathilde Monnier, Daniel Larrieu, Philippe Decouflé…), it contributed to the development of conceptual dance in the 1990s, with its main representatives, Jérôme Bel and Xavier Leroy. A site of experimentation and the home to atypical projects, La Ménagerie remains committed to exploring new forms, more specifically with two annual festivals, “Les Inaccoutumés” in the fall and “Étrange Cargo” in the spring. These events have featured and revealed pieces by Alain Buffard, Claudia Triozzi, Grand Magasin, Benoît Lachambre, Sabine Macher, Christian Rizzo, Boris Charmatz, Philippe Quesne, Fanny de Chaillé, Yves-Noël Genod, Thomas Ferrand, Vincent Macaigne, Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud, to name but a few…
A monograph by Patricia Brignone, La Ménagerie de verre. Nouvelles pratiques du corps scénique (Marseille: Al Dante, 2006), provides an in-depth look into this history.
Jérôme BEL
Jérôme Bel is the most influential French choreographer as well as the best-known internationally. An alumnus from the CNDC in Angers, he developed his own approach after working with Angelin Preljocaj, Daniel Larrieu, Philippe Decouflé. His originality lies in his deconstruction of the codes of dance and the reconfiguration of the context of both performance and show. His main creations include Nom donné par l’auteur [Name given by the author] (1994), a choreography of objects; Jérôme Bel (1995), founded on the nudity of performers; Shirtologie (1997), which involved a dancer wearing several dozens of t-shirts; Xavier Le Roy (2000), authored by Bel but realized by choreographer Xavier Le Roy; The show must go on (2001), with twenty interpreters, nineteen pop standards and a DJ. Several shows centering on their very performer followed: Véronique Doisneau(2004), a solo piece on the work of the Opéra de Paris dancer; Isabel Torres (2005), for the ballet of the Teatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro; Pichet Klunchun and Myself (2005), created in Bangkok with Thai traditional dancer Pichet Klunchun; and Cédric Andrieux (2009). More recently, Jérôme Bel authored 3Abschied (2010), a collaboration with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker adapted from Gustav Malher’s Das Lied von der Erde; and Disabled Theater (2012), with Theater Hora, a company of mentally disabled professional actors based in Zurich. In the summer of 2012 he presented a participative creation, Cour d’Honneur, in Avignon.
His work is regularly featured in museums or exhibitions (Centre Georges-Pompidou, Tate Modern, MoMA, documenta…). His Catalogue raisonné 1994-2005 was published by Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers and he recently co-edited Emails 2009-2010 with Boris Charmatz (Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2013).
