Grenade, les 20 ans

Documentary on the Grenade company and dance group, directed by Josette Baïz, who presented several different pieces by different choreographers for their 20th anniversary.

After having patiently, for years, mixed with contemporary dance the cultures and styles of neighbourhoods and thus created a “Grenade energy”, I felt a real need for openness. I then came up with the idea of proposing all the dancers of the Grenade company, adults and children alike, to choreographers accepting to rework or develop a piece from their repertoire. Names were obvious: Jean-Claude Gallotta, Angelin Preljocaj, Jean-Christophe Maillot, Michel Kelemenis, Philippe Decouflé, Abou Lagraa. And they all said “yes” to the project with the greatest simplicity. The project thus took on proportions that I hadn’t imagined at the start. The more we progressed in this artistic adventure, the more I realised how difficult the proposal really was. These choreographers all possess a highly personal and original style, meaning that the dancers of the Grenade company must be able to interpret a very broad panel of dance forms. 

In the works, they have to find a quality and a presence corresponding to the writing of each choreographer: the youngest must reproduce the fast, frenzied style of Jean-Claude Gallotta in Mammame as well as the madness of his interpreters; Philippe Découflé’s funny duet danced by Christophe Salengro and Cathy Savy has been entrusted to young interpreters;  Michel Kelemenis’s deep and moving Faune is interpreted by a teenager; Angelin Preljocaj’s jerky and repetitive work, Marché Noir, must maintain its right balance with preteen dancers aged 11 to 14; Jean-Christophe Maillot’s airy score Vers Un Pays Sage, combining technique, lightness and rapidity, will encourage the older dancers to excel themselves in a neo-classical approach to dance; the professional company will find cultural mixing and fluidity with Abou Lagraa’s jubilant Allegoria Stanza.

CODEX / 1986 

Choreography: Philippe Decouflé. Music: My baby’s gone by Fats Domino. Solo dancer: Auguste N’ganta. Duet dancers: Lisa Rapezzi, Sofiane Merabet

Codex, created in 1986 in Amsterdam and presented at the Festival d’Avignon, is inspired by an encyclopaedia drawn at the end of the 1970s by a young Italian, Luigi Seraphini – Codex Serafinianus – populated by fantastic beasts, imaginary plants and live vegetables. 

Source: Arte.tv

MAMMAME / 1985 

Choreography: Jean-Claude Gallotta. Music: Henry Torgue, Serge Houppin. Extract dancers: Lilou Jouret, Blanche De Kerguenec, Emma Cappato, Maud Durand, Louis Seignobos, Victor Patrice De Breuil, Anthony Velay, Samuel Maarek. Duet dancers: Pierre Boileau, Camille Cortez. Schubert dancers: Lilou Jouret, Blanche De Kerguenec, Emma Cappato, Maud Durand, Louis Seignobos, Victor Patrice De Breuil, Anthony Velay, Samuel Maarek, Auguste N’ganta, Lola Cougard, Mylène Lamugnière, Sinath Ouk, Aurore Indaburu, Kim Evin, Michael Jaume, Rafaël Sauzet, Sofiane Merabet, Pierre Boileau

“In dance, says the choreographer, some of us like people to tell them stories, while others not at all.” Mammame seems to allow this approach. Through the story of the Mammame tribe, it is possible to tell (yourself) a story. Jean-Claude Gallotta does just this. “A Mammame garrison, in the Arkadine desert, on June 20th of a leap year. The dance opens with the fall of a man”. The imp Kröll and the witch Nizza are there. A kind of endangered species, the Mammames dance the Cabascholle.

FAUNE (inspired by FAUNE FOMITCH) / 1988 

Choreography: Michel Kelemenis. Music: L’Après-midi d’un Faune by Claude Debussy (interpreted by the new Philarmonia Orchestra directed by Pierre Boulez). Sound editing by Jérôme Decque / GNEM. Solo dancer: Rafaël Sauzet

In 1988, Kelemenis revealed his Faune Fomitch in the Biennale de la danse de Lyon, on the huge stage of the Ravel auditorium. Inspired by the work of Vaslav Fomitch Nijinsky and by Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem, the piece was the subject of an electroacoustic musical creation by the composer Gilles Grand. Josette Baïz can be thanked for the initiative of a transmission in 2011 to the young 17-year-old dancer, Thomas Birzan, to be incorporated into the programme for the 20th anniversary of her company project, Grenade. For this occasion, the dance was reconciled with the music written 100 years earlier by Claude Debussy for the Russian choreographer, the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun). 

MARCHÉ NOIR / 1985 

Choreography: Angelin Preljocaj. Music: Marc Khanne. Dancers: Camille Cortez, Lisa Rapezzi, Axelle Anglade

The Ballet Preljocaj takes dance to places where nobody is expecting it! Created in 1998, the Groupe Urbain d’Intervention Dansée (G.U.I.D.) performs in a wide variety of public spaces and in unexpected places to allow as many people as possible to discover contemporary dance.

The G.U.I.D. presents a work in its totality: Marché noir, Angelin Preljocaj’s first creation that won the Concours de Bagnolet in 1985.

MINIATURES / 2004 

Choreography: Jean-Christophe Maillot. Music: Suite Française by Ivan Fedele (recording by Arnaud Moral). Duet dancers: Lisa Rapezzi, Pierre Boileau

“Take seven musical creations written by seven contemporary composers; these musics are the reflection of seven universes, seven specific and different imaginations; they have not been written for dance. Offer them, impose them on a choreographer without other constraints than to “compose” with… This is the rule of the game that I have set myself, according to the choice of Marc Monnet, the artistic director of the Printemps des Arts, who is behind the commissioning of these works. Seven musical miniatures associated with seven commissions to visual artists who highlight a single choreographic challenge. Out of generosity and curiosity, composers and visual artists have accepted to play along. They abandon their work, like pieces of a puzzle that they allow me to assemble into a choreographic work. They accept that their composition escapes them and that the choreographer who I am, free to enjoy them, imagines for them another life, another destiny.”

(Jean-Christophe Maillot)

VERS UN PAYS SAGE / 1985 

Choreography: Jean-Christophe Maillot. Music: Fearful Symetries by John Adams (interpreted by the Orchestra of St Luke’s). Dancers: Aurore Indaburu, Kim Evin, Lola Cougard, Louna Delbouys-Roy, Mylène Lamugnière, Nordine Belmekki, Pierre Boileau, Rafaël Sauzet, Sofiane Merabet, Sinath Ouk

Jean-Christophe Maillot created Vers un Pays Sage in memory of his father Jean Maillot, a painter and artist who died young. A workaholic, this renowned colourist is the author of near on 260 paintings, opera costumes and sets. The energy he dedicated to his painting and to life in general is the story line of this ballet of a rare physicality. Vers un Pays Sage adjusts itself to the frenzied music of John Adams and offers the dancers a challenge: will they manage to cross the finishing line of this ballet? If Jean-Christophe Maillot tracks down idle times, it is in order to better celebrate life, in the image of a father who burnt up for this life an insolent amount of energy.