Hommage à Trisha [transmission 2014]

Extrait chorégraphique remonté par le groupe chorégraphique de l’Autre Nous (Privas), coordinatrice artistique Émilie Blache, dans le cadre de Danse en amateur et répertoire (2013)

Choreography by Josette Baïz  
A choreographic extract remodelled by the L’Autre Nous choreographic group (Privas), artistic coordinator Émilie Blache, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2013) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group

The association L’Autre Nous has worked towards the development of dance in Ardèche since 2004, through training, creation and dissemination activities. Émilie Blache, a dancer and teacher, wished to propose choreographic workshops to her most motivated students. In 2009, the L’Autre Nous choreographic group was the result of these workshops and of a desire to live out the adventure of creation and the show. Over these years, the dancers have created choreographic works, in a contemporary approach, combining a variety of aesthetics and techniques (classical, jazz, tap dance, body percussions, etc.). The ten dancers (all female) in the group are aged eleven to seventeen. 

The project

The chosen work is an ensemble of three pieces paying tribute to the choreographer Trisha Brown, who, through their meeting, greatly marked Josette Baïz’s work. These three pieces were created for three groups of dancers: the duet for experienced dancers, a Line Up for children, and a Line Up for teenagers. Félix Heaulme, a dancer from the company Grenade, danced the duet Hommage à Trisha for the creation of the show Grenade, les 20 ans ! At the age of ten, he joined the group Grenade and thus, at the same age as the youngsters concerned by the project, discovered one of Josette Baïz’s works. Through its evocation of Trisha Brown’s work and the specificity of Josette Baïz‘s choreographic work, this piece guided the dancers towards the notion of improvisation during the rehearsal sessions scheduled around the transmission times.

The choreographer

Trained by Odile Duboc, Josette Baïz has taught contemporary dance since 1978 in Aix-en-Provence, the city where she created her first choreographies. In 1989, a milestone in her artistic career, she moved for a year’s residency into the northern suburbs of Marseille and Aix-en-Provence where she met young people from different origins and cultures. The work they carried out together led her to radically rethink her approach. With them she developed a style, which she called “Grenade” like the group of young dancers that she set up in 1992 and the company of professional interpreters derived from this group, created in 1998. This offshoot around a bright fruit with its tasty juice is also the emblem of long, generous work around cross-culture. A cultural mosaic that, each time, comes to life in her shows in new outlines.