Urban Ballet [transmission 2015]

Extrait de la pièce d’Anthony Égéa remontée par le groupe Amalgam (Merville), coordinatrice artistique Marie Dessaux, dans le cadre de « Danse en amateur et répertoire » (2014)

Choreography by Anthony Égéa
A choreographic extract remodelled by the group Amalgam (Merville), artistic coordinator Marie Dessaux, as part of the “Danse en amateur et repertoire” programme (2014) (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing).

The group
Based in Merville, a rural town near Toulouse, the group Amalgam is made up of some ten young people aged fifteen to twenty-eight, 50% female and 50% male. Since 2012 Marie Dessaux’s short-piece choreographies have been an extension of her teaching in her school (jazz, hip-hop), and have been performed in the region. Marie Dessaux‘s career was profoundly changed by the discovery of Anthony Égéa’s style and, in particular, by the place that this choreographer grants to the female body (for example in his work Amazones in 2003). In this poetic approach, she identifies a way for young people to broaden their horizons and break away from a hip-hop approach at times reduced to break dance technicity.

The choreographer
Anthony Égéa is rare in that he has completed his hip-hop experience by high-level training in other styles: classical dance with Rosella Hightower in Cannes, and modern African American dance with Alvin Ailey in New York. This is obvious in the pieces performed by his company Rêvolution, created in 1991, just as it is in the classes he gives in the associated training centre. In 2008, the piece Urban Ballet addresses the notion of corps de ballet, with a headcount, exceptional for that time, of nine dancers, performing notably Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater, Ravel’s Boléro, and a composition by Xenakis. Naked, the bodies are the objects of a quasi-sculptural study. Two years later, Anthony Égéa composed Tétris for the Ballet de l’Opéra national de Bordeaux 

The artist
From a contemporary dance background, Célia Thomas joined forces with Anthony Égéa to become his assistant at the time of his creation of Urban Ballet. She is currently responsible for the transmission of this piece, placed at the core of her teaching, but that is now, for the first time, the subject of a revival for the stage. The Boléro is a highly emblematic part of this, taking to a new height the logic of the corps de ballet, rigorous unison and hybridisation by pure classical figures. The change in number of dancers to eleven today has had no impact: the aim is to make as few changes as possible to encourage a group with a good level to confront what is essential, as close as possible to professional practices.

Amateur Dance and Repertory is a companion program to amateur practice beyond the dance class and the technical learning phase. Intended for groups of amateur dancers, it opens a space of sharing for those who wish to deepen a practice and a knowledge of the dance in relation to its history.

Laurent Barré
Head of Research and Choreographic Directories
Anne-Christine Waibel
Research Assistant and Choreographic Directories
+33 (0)1 41 83 43 96
danse-amateur-repertoire@cnd.fr

Source: CN D

More information: https://www.cnd.fr/en/page/323-danse-en-amateur-et-repertoire-grant-programme