Combat de Carnaval et Carême

First showing 18, 19 & 20 January 2016

Le lieu unique, Centre for contemporary culture in Nantes

The project, Combat de Carnaval et Carême is based on a writing process that I've been using for several years now. The idea is to initiate dance through concrete actions that, depending on the way they are performed, their quality, rhythm, space, and sequencing speed, take on a more or less narrative, expressionist, plastic or abstract quality.

Dance being the movement that links one posture to another, it is possible to write movement from a collection of borrowed gestures, whether they are gestures from everyday life or work, or more specific iconography: pictorial, photographic, cinematographic...

Between two forms, movement unfolds, so it's simply a matter of organising their succession.

It was from this idea that I created the Foules project: an audio score communicated via smartphones to around a hundred amateurs who performed to it in real time.

This experience enabled me to verify the richness of this compositional process and the singularity of the dance it produces, since memory does not interfere, leaving room for the immediacy of interpretation.

After this work, intended for amateurs, I wanted to repeat the experience with professional dancers who are capable of appropriating the movement and infusing it with their own choreographic knowledge. This became the project Combat de Carnaval et Carême.

Olivia Grandville