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Lecture demonstration (1981)
Lecture demonstration
1981
Trainees of CNDC Angers
Head of the CNDC at Angers from 1978 to 1981, Alwin Nikolais made his trainee dancers part of experimental research, in a laboratory, far from the brilliance of the stage. Nonetheless, the Angers Town Council became very involved in this project and insisted that the local population discover this work. Conferences featuring demonstrations were to satsify this curiosity. Through them we can see how the French trainee dancers found the tools and building blocks for their own movement in the teaching of the American master. When it came to the involvement of most of the great American choreographers, what was sought was expertise in technique, which was viewed as not being of a high enough standard in France. With Alwin Nikolais, however, technique only made sense as part of a philosophical vision, which turns its back on the expression of the self.
Instead, this is replaced by an abstract relationship with the world whereby the body responds to principals of shape and the production of space and time, and attention to motion (a flow of interior movement loaded with intention). Setting out these parameters explicitly and making infinite combinations from them convinced the young French artists that their gestures were being clarified and emancipated.
Gérard Mayen
Credits
enregistré le 13 février 1981 dans les studios du CNDC boulevard Henri-Arnauddanseurs-stagiaires du CNDC Christian Bourigault, Isabelle Destoop, Yves Le Guen, Myriam Hervé-Gill, Santha Lengproduction CNDC Angers
