May B [transmission 2017]

Extrait remonté par la compagnie Edva (Sainte-Clotilde), responsable artistique Véronique Asencio, dans le cadre de Danse en amateur et répertoire (2016)

An extract remodelled by the company Edva (Sainte-Clotilde), artistic manager Véronique Asencio, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2016) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Based in Sainte-Clotilde on La Reunion Island and directed by Véronique Asencio, Edva brings together young students from the OI La Danse school. Students are offered technical classes and research workshops, a cursus completed by the dissemination of shows. Participation in the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme allows them to experience first-hand how professionals live on tour and to discover in detail the functioning of a troupe. 

The project
The choice to work on an extract from May B (1981), a flagship work by Maguy Marin and, more widely still, of the history of dance, in this instance remodelled by Isabelle Sissmann-Missal, allows the young interpreters to try their hands at a powerful story that combines dance and narration on the subjects of “constituent shatterings, giving birth and childhood”. It also frees an area of research around a unique language, a creative process and, more broadly, offers to strengthen within them a choreographic culture. 

The choreographer
Of Spanish origin, born in Toulouse in 1951, Maguy Marin began her apprenticeship at Maurice Béjart’s Mudra school in Brussels. She founded an initial company with Daniel Ambash, before being awarded a prize at the Concours de Bagnolet in 1978. Based at the Maison des arts de Créteil between 1980 and 1990, her company became a Centre chorégraphique national in 1985. Collaborating with the composer Denis Mariotte since 1987, Maguy Marin creates a highly personal language, delving into the gestures and sounds of the body, dance and text, live music, seeking allies in the world of literature. Existential, connected to the individual and the group, her dance condenses powerful aesthetic and philosophical challenges. At the head of the Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape, in the Lyon suburbs, since 1998, her company regained its independence in 2011. Maguy Marin has produced more than forty shows.