Decodex [transmission 2017]

Extrait remonté par l’Atelier chorégraphique (Deuil-la-Barre), responsable artistique Christine Léger, dans le cadre de Danse en amateur et répertoire (2016)

An extract remodelled by L’Atelier chorégraphique (Deuil-la-Barre), artistic manager Christine Léger, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2016) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Set up in 2009, in Deuil-la-Barre in Île-de-France, coordinated by Christine Léger, this group of eight female dancers with a contemporary dance background and an average age of around 50, is curious about all choreographic worlds. It has discovered and plunged into the writing of Alban Richard, the Ben Aïm brothers, and Christian Bourigault. Wishing to develop work based on listening, togetherness, and knowledge-sharing, it gives stage performances several times a year.

The project
Philippe Decouflé’s Decodex (1985) unfurls a wondrous world of fabulous creatures and quirky appearances out of all proportion to the limitless imagination of the choreographer. Exploring strangeness and humour and passing through the strata of this immensely successful show are some of the aims of the group, that is set to collaborate with the dancers Éric Martin and Alexandra Naudet, key interpreters of the company DCA. 

The choreographer
A key personality of contemporary dance since the early 1980s and the standard bearer of a certain idea of what is popular and erudite in art, Philippe Decouflé, who spent time in the early 1980s in the CNDC d’Angers directed by the American multimedia master Alwin Nikolais, blends dance, video, text, lighting and optical effects in joyfully phantasmagorical shows. At the head of his own company, DCA, since 1983, based at the Chaufferie in Saint-Denis (93), he maintains the high pressure of a handcrafted and erudite choreographic gesture, the result of an adventurous and independent spirit.