Ambra Senatore
THE HUMAN CROSSES ALL MY SHOWS. I LOOK FOR A DANCE THAT MEETS PEOPLE AND PROPOSES A HUMAN RELATIONSHIP, LEAVING PLACE FOR FRAGILITY, DOUBT, CRITICAL SENSE, SHARING AND HUMOR
Italian choreographer and performer from Turin, Ambra Senatore has been director of the National Choreographic Center in Nantes since 2016. Her dance is found in this tenuous place between the construction of action, fiction in rehearsal and the truth of presence. At the foundation of all her gestures is the every day “observed with a magnifying glass” which she shifts, reverses until the gesture becomes fictionalized, until the dance becomes theatrical. Adept at surprises, cuts, and rehearsals, reminiscent of cinema.
Ambra Senatore re-composes reality like a director. She directs the spectator’s gaze, it is up to him to recompose the puzzle of this choreographic material and the clues that it sows. This way of juggling situations to the point of absurdity brings out a gentle irony.
In Italy, she trained with artists such as Roberto Castello, Rafaella Giordano with whom she collaborated quickly. As an interpreter we will also see her working with Jean-Claude Gallotta, Giorgio Rossi, Georges Lavaudant, or Antonio Tagliarini. At the end of the 90s, she created pieces in collaboration with other authors then finished a doctorate on contemporary dance (2004) before teaching the history of dance in Milan.
From 2004 and 2009, she focused her choreographic research on solos which she performed: EDA-solo, Merce, Informazioni Utili, Altro piccolo Progetto domestico, Maglie, before moving on to group pieces: Passo (2010) in duet version then quintet, A Posto (2011), female trio and John (2012). With her company EDA, which she created in 2012 in Besançon, she choreographs her first piece for young audiences from the text by Fabrice Melquiot, Nos amours bêtes (2013), which will be followed in 2016 by Quante Storie, a project of the device “Au foot of the letter ”, which she composes in a mirror with Loic Touzé.
In 2014 she presented Aringa Rossa, a piece for nine dancers at the Lyon Biennale made of staves, duets, recomposed paintings. After Pièces (2016), she created at the 2017 Avignon Scena madre festival, a show for seven dancers where she played cinematic codes.
When she takes over the management of the CCN in Nantes in January 2016, Ambra Senatore brings in her luggage this dance close to the human, this way of meeting people and places. In Nantes, she offers creations in situ in schools (Petits pas and Pas au tableau) or museums, imagines meetings – Primavera, Festival Trajectoires, choreographs the danced interludes of the Cinderella opera by Jules Massenet and embarks on a Conversation (2019) with personalities and residents, to understand how dance can slip into the great debates of contemporary society.
In 2018, she co-wrote Giro di pista with choreographer Marc Lacourt, an interactive ball for children and families, then the duo Il nous faudrait une secrétaire in 2021. In parallel to her work with Marc Lacourt, she created Partita in 2020, a series of duos for a dancer and a live musician, and invited the original cast of her show Passo to take part in a new creation, Col tempo.