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Huddle - Scramble [transmission 2016]
Extraits remontés par le Groupe d’intervention chorégraphique-Association Filigrane (La Roche-sur-Yon), coordinatrice Maryline Charneau, dans le cadre de Danse en amateur et répertoire (2015)
Huddle (1961)
Scramble (1971)
Choreography by Simone Forti
Extracts remodelled by the Groupe d’intervention chorégraphique (Association Filigrane, La Roche-sur-Yon), coordinator Maryline Charneau, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2015) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).
The group
Passionate about improvisation and methods for instantaneous composition of movement, the Groupe d’intervention chorégraphique, set up in 2003 and based in La Roche-sur-Yon, is made up of amateurs aged 38 to 66. Advocating in their practice, the notions of experimentation and pleasure of playing, authenticity and spontaneity, for the past two years the participants have entrusted their workshops to Claire Filmon, Simone Forti’s collaborator for the past twenty years. The group has received the support of the Grand R, scène nationale de La Roche-sur-Yon.
The project
Wishing to further and refine its improvisation practice around the issues of “living” and “dancing together”, the group asked Claire Filmon, who has transmitted Simone Forti’s works for the past ten years, to examine in depth the history of improvisation and its artistic, pedagogical, philosophical and political stakes. The pieces Huddle and Scramble, both belonging to the Dance Constructions period, in Simone Forti’s own words, are explored in various contexts, indoors and outdoors alike, as close as possible to the choreographer’s adventurous spirit.
The choreographer
A strong personality of the American scene, on the “happening” side, Simone Forti, following visual arts studies, made a name for herself in the years 1960-1970 with performances such as See Saw (1960), where two people swing on a see saw, the slightest movements of one affecting those of the other, and Rollers (1960), with Robert Morris and Yvonne Rainer, she sings on wooden pallets fitted with rollers. Close to the Judson Dance Theater, an avant-garde movement that emerged in the 1960s in New York, she explored in turn the movements of animals and the relationship between gesture and word. Among her emblematic pieces are Huddle (1961), on the subject of the group as a living organism through the climbing of a mountain of dancers, Sleep Walkers, inspired from the behaviour of pink flamingos and polar bears and Scramble (1971), a swirling movement phenomenon. She has collaborated with Steve Paxton and, in 1986, created the Simone Forti & Troupe, with which she produces danced portraits of landscapes, mixing gestures and texts.