François Verret

A trained architect, he discovered dance in 1975 with Karine Saporta for whom he also performed. He continued his training with Susan Buirge and Jacques Patarozzi, whilst pursuing research with a variety of partners. After spending a year with Hideyuki Yano and Elia Wolliaston, he founded his own group in 1979. A prize-winner at the Bagnolet International Choreographic Contest in 1980, he rather quickly distanced himself from institutional production and dissemination channels and developed partnerships with various artists, on the fringe: actors, musicians, dancers, visual artists, lighting designers. In 1994, he settled in the suburbs of Paris and opened his own place, the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, a hub for research and creation which he directed until 2000.

In 2002 he was awarded the Chorégraphie prize by the SACD; the same year he became an associate artist at the Théâtre national de Bretagne.

In 2014, he took up a residency at L’Apostrophe, scène nationale in Cergy (Val-d’Oise), where he proposed a four-year long-term project: Chantiers 2014-2018. As part of this project, which he then developed in several cities (Strasbourg, Le Mans, Nîmes, Tarbes), he created Rhapsodie Démente (2015), Le Pari (2017) and 1000 jours qui ébranlèrent le monde (creation in 2018/2019). 

Whilst building on great literary works (from Goethe to Péguy, Kafka, Melville, Musil and Faulkner), he remains committed to the idea of “choreographing reality” by questioning space and gestures, and privileges experimentation, processes. His works are metaphorical and question social and political aspects or explore the value of work and memory, human enigma. Although his work queries public space and reflects a strong ethical standpoint, his poetics, akin to Kafka’s world, lead him to imagine performances whose structures are complex, where bodies and machines fall prey to incredible disruption. His highly-unusual creations walk the high-wire of derision and re-examine the relationship with the public.

Source : Irène Filiberti, Myriam Blœdé, Dictionnaire de la danse (dir. Philippe Le Moal), Larousse, 2008

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