Inanna [transmission 2015]

Extrait de la pièce de Carolyn Carlson remontée par le groupe A Corps Danse (Saint-Leu-la-Forêt), coordinatrice artistique Claire Van Vlamertynghe, dans le cadre de “Danse en amateur et répertoire” (2014)

Choreography by Carolyn Carlson
A choreographic extract remodelled by the group A Corps Danse (Saint-Leu-la-Forêt), artistic coordinator Claire Van Vlamertynghe, as part of the “Danse en amateur et répertoire programme” (2014) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Set up five years ago as an outlet for the most experienced and motivated students of a dance school in the Val d’Oise, A Corps Danse brings together some ten women with an extraordinary difference in age (from eighteen to fifty-five years). The group presents its usual productions in the surrounding area and during the meetings of the Fédération française de danse. It has enjoyed experiences with the choreographers Ambra Senatore and Farid Ounchiouene, and has composed original approaches to the musics of Aperghis, and the Rite of Spring, based on Valentine Hugo’s drawings. This time, the confrontation with the demands of an already fixed choreographic writing constitutes a significant shift, both in terms of attention to detail and intensity of physical effort. 

The choreographer
Since she was taken on as a permanent soloist by the Opéra de Paris, at that time a visionary, the path taken by Carolyn Carlson, born in 1943 in the USA, has assumed the dimensions of a legend at the heart of the French choreographic landscape (and beyond, particularly through her time as the director of the Venice Biennale). She has created more than one hundred pieces, all “visual poems”. Her figures are inhabited by an incomparable sense of the flow of movement, while yet preserving an incredible accuracy of traits. The practice of writing and the plastic arts has a certain influence on her frequently meditative universe. Created in 2005 in the wake of her nomination as director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Roubaix, Inanna is Carolyn Carlson’s only work that is solely danced by women.

The artist
Followed by Carolyn Carlson, the transmission of an extract from Inanna was entrusted to Sara Orselli, the interpreter of this piece right from its creation, becoming at the same time the choreographer’s assistant. A quartet was mainly chosen, to be re-adapted in this case for nine interpreters. Sara Orselli offers them an experience closely resembling actual practice in a professional company, starting with a class directly related to the piece, followed by an improvisation aiming at recovering the intimate meaning of the gestures. The sharpness of the visual image never lets us forget the intensity of feeling. The women in A Corps Danse have experience in relationships that allows them to understand the subject of Inanna, extolling the supportive qualities of women.