Sacre #2 [transmission 2016]

Extrait remonté par l’Atelier (Livry-Gargan et Les Pavillons-sous-Bois), responsable artistique Sarah Besnainou-Legrand
et Murielle Martinenghi, dans le cadre de Danse en amateur et répertoire (2015)

Choreography by Dominique Brun
An extract remodelled by l’Atelier (Livry-Gargan and Les Pavillons-sous-Bois), artistic managers Sarah Besnainou-Legrand and Murielle Martinenghi, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2015) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Made up of classical and contemporary dance students from the Conservatoires à rayonnement communal of Livry-Gargan and Les Pavillons-sous-Bois, this group, set up in 2013 and based in Livry-Gargan and Les Pavillons-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) is led by Sarah Besnainou-Legrand and Murielle Martinenghi. The twenty female participants are aged between fifteen and forty and meet on the occasion of training courses and creations in connection with the Forum du Blanc-Mesnil and the Théâtre Aragon in Tremblay-en-France. The Conservatoires’ studios are placed at the dancers’ disposal for rehearsal purposes.

The project
By taking on The Rite of Spring, a flagship piece of choreographic history, the group has chosen to confront Dominique Brun’s specific choreographic approach, with her dancers Caroline Baudouin and Roméo Agid. The meeting resulted in the discovery of archive documents and in the learning of some dances from the Rite. An analytical study of Stravinsky’s musical score was also a valuable source of inspiration. Extracts from the first tableau allowed a variety of dances to be experimented: those of the young people and the flower-picking maidens, but also the powerful Dance of the Earth. In opposition, the second tableau allowed them to discover the frailty of the dance of the Young girls. The group was thus able to develop its capacity to dance together through a fine and attentive mutual listening process. 

The choreographer
A dancer, choreographer and researcher, Dominique Brun confronts the history of dance through her works. Whether they are “historical re-enactments” or “creations”, she invents them on the basis of the remaining archive documents handed down to us. She particularly made a name for herself with her re-creation of The Afternoon of a Faun, the first piece choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky in 1912, to Claude Debussy’s music. In 2008, she took on The Rite of Spring, also by Nijinsky, to Igor Stravinsky’s music. At the request of the director Jan Kounen, who wished to include extracts from the Rite into his film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (2010), she first re-created eight minutes of the piece before setting out to re-create the entirety of this legendary ballet. Supported by two researchers from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (School for advanced studies in social sciences), Sophie Jacotot and Juan Vallejos, she relied on her thorough knowledge of Nijinsky style, as well as on Valentine Hugo’s drawings (1887-1968), the testimonies of the Rite collaborators, and the press commentaries of the time.