In the summer of 2015, Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud were the first choreographers invited by the TanzTheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch to create an original piece for the company since the loss of the choreographer. They created The Lighters – Dancehall Polyphony, where meet and derive the polyphonic repertoire of English madrigals from the Renaissance to the Dancehall of Kingston’s streets. For their new piece they decided to continue this research and explore these practices and contrasts. They invited five ballerinas and collaborators specialized in the Dancehall to join them in the exploration of song and dance.
Fascinated by the rhythmic complexity of Jamaican Dancehall, Cecilia Bengolea has been exploring this musical and choreographic culture born in 1960s Jamaica for few years. Dancehall is a lifestyle that resists power structures, a denunciation of oppressive ideologies. She has met two star dancers in this form (Damion BG Dancerz and Giddy Elite Team), and integrated the group Verbnation from Kingston.
Moved by a dream to sing and dance simultaneously, François Chaignaud has pursued the study of traditional Georgian vocal polyphony. Outside of Georgia, this repertory is relegated to folkloric contexts. Its richness can be precious and inspiring resources to associate it to other contexts and other vocal repertories (notably the beginnings of French polyphonic music written in the 13th century). Excited by the immense technical challenges that singing and dancing these powerful polyphonies a capella present, François Chaignaud dreams of a total mode of expression by which bodies create an event that is at once musical, vocal, visual, and kinetic.
By taking on a methodology of research before bringing together and composing the choreographic and musical material that will emerge from it, François Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea affirm both their passion for choreographic and artistic practices outside of contemporary dance’s field of reference and their desire to create a mode of expression that is specific, analytical, abstract, and humorous from experiences with these heterogeneous languages. This work calls upon the diversity of the genealogies and sources encountered as much as it emancipates itself from them to create unexpected forms, reconciliations and combinations freed from the original references. They thus pursue their longstanding research founded on a curiosity, as much anthropological as it is formal, about choreographic and musical forms of expression.
l’équipe
co-production
& production
co-productions
Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy et La Bâtie-Festival de Genève dans le cadre du programme INTERREG France-Suisse 2014-2020, Club Création Entreprises – Annecy, l’Echangeur – Centre de Développement Chorégraphique Hauts-de-France, Biennale de la Danse de Lyon 2016, Festival d’Automne à Paris/Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou, Opéra de Lille, deSingel – Anvers, Salder’s Wells – Londres, CCN2 – Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble dans le cadre de l’Accueil Studio, Centre de Développement Chorégraphique Toulouse/Midi-Pyrénées, Centre national de danse contemporaine Angers dans le cadre de l’Accueil Studio, PACT Zollverein – Essen, Gessnerallee – Zürich, La Pop – Paris.
soutiens
Institut français – Paris (2014-2015), FIACRE Fonds d’Innovation Artistique et Culturelle en Rhône-Alpes (2015), Ménagerie de verre – Paris (Studiolab), CN D Centre National de la Danse de Pantin (accueil en résidence).
remerciements
Dancing Rebel, Giddy Elite Team, Nicky Trice Rifical Team, O’shean et Suns French Squad et Rudey Legacy, Mélodie France, Geoffroy Jourdain (les Cris de Paris), Elodie Tessier, Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy.