Rites [transmission 2023]

A choreographic extract remodelled by the group La Mécanique du Bonheur, coordinator Stéphanie Roussel, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme 2022/2023 (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

Transmission by Marie-Odile Langlère. 

Presented on 3 June 2023, Le Triangle, Cité de la danse, in Rennes.

The piece when it was created 

Rites 

Firstly produced 17 February 1967 

Choreography: Jacqueline Robinson 

Work for eight performers: Anne Lecouvreur, Isabelle Lemarchand, Marie-France Frisch, Éliane Garcia, Nicole Princer, Geneviève Piguet, Françoise Saint Thibault, Jacqueline Robinson  

Popular music suggested by Deben Bhattacharya 

The group 

Created in 2010 in Blois, this dance troupe is made up of 12 seniors, some of whom had never attended a dance class before joining the group. Dance teacher Françoise Durand gives them classes and other workshops alongside their performances. The troupe is also planning to create and present a series of short works to be performed in various public spaces. This is the second time that La Mécanique du Bonheur has performed in the Amateur Dance and Repertoire programme: in 2017, the group performed extracts from La Jeune Fille et la mort (2012) by choreographer Thomas Lebrun. 

The project 

La Mécanique du Bonheur chose an extract from Rites, created in 1967 by Jacqueline Robinson for her professional dance students, and reprised in 1986. Only one 16 minute sequence remains of this work, whose themes include primitive myths, time and the invisible. Danced to traditional Indian and African music, it has all the hallmarks of Robinson’s work: musicality, use of space, internalised movement and so on. The group reconstructed the piece, with the help of Marie-Odile Langlère, who performed in Rites, using video footage and notes made by Jacqueline Robinson, who consulted ethnomusicologist Deben Bhattacharya during the process of creation.