In Toulouse, the Ici & Là festival explores the contemporary choreographic scene from top to bottom
Conducive to great emulation, the 2022 edition is rich in remarkable pieces, among the new creations of Christian Rizzo and Olivia Grandville.
After a forced cancellation in 2021, due to the pandemic, the Ici & Là festival – organized by La Place de la danse, National Choreographic Development Center (CDCN) in Toulouse – can get back in motion in 2022. especially since this edition of the relaunch is rising to a high level of quality. Offering a great variety of formats and registers, it offers an extremely stimulating panorama of today’s dance.
Large group piece, presented at the start of the festival, the highly anticipated new creation by Christian Rizzo, miramar, an ideal success on the vast stage of the main hall of the ThéâtredelaCité. As part of a superb stage set-up, all in clean light lines and fractured sound waves (masterful composition by Gerome Nox), the performers evolve most of the time with their backs to the audience, facing an opaque horizon at the back of the stage. Crossed by a powerful meditative energy, the piece thus tends towards a mysterious elsewhere and generates an undulating choreographic flow, orchestrated with the cord, whose ardent reverberates durably in us.
male bodies
Just as exciting, but in a very different tone, the new creation by Olivia Grandville, stampede, tackles the – oh so sensitive – question of male-female relationships apprehended here solely through male gazes and bodies. Oscillating with alacrity between dance, theatre, performance, fashion show and music-hall revue, the result delights the eye and the ear as much as it nourishes the mind (we will come back to this in more detail in a future article).
Among the other pieces seen, Problem seduced by its slightly (dis)twisted singularity, perceptible from its title. Striving to offer a choreographic translation of the glitch (a type of digital bug, often jumping), Florencia Demestri and Samuel Lefeuvre – who together ensure the conception and interpretation of the piece – succeeded, with few means and effects , to create an astonishing universe, tinged with futurism. Throughout, jerks in slow motion, sudden immobilizations in sudden accelerations, develops a very playful physical language (see lunar), sometimes almost burlesque, until the final somersault.
two solos
Two more female solos stand out, which manifest two strong personalities, each in its own way. Let us first quote Groove by Soa Ratsifandrihana. In a very frontal relationship with the public, installed in a square around her, the young dancer/choreographer engages – in chiaroscuro – in captivating rhythmic variations, her body presenting multiple expressive possibilities, with or without music.
Let’s end with Nebula by Vania Vaneau, a striking performative piece (even the sense of smell is strongly solicited here), both raw and perfected, giving shape to a kind of transcendental ceremony in deep interaction with nature and the elements. A truly intense experience.
The Here & There Festival will take place in Toulouse until February 12.
Touring shows:
miramar10 and 11 February at the Théâtre de Nîmes, 5 and 6 March at the Opéra de Lille, 18 and 19 March at the Théâtre de Lorient, 11 and 14 April at the CENTQUATRE-PARIS, 3 May at Dunkerque (Bateau Feu), 9 and June 10 in Perpignan (L’Archipel), November 30 and 1uh December in Montpellier (Théâtre Jean-Claude Carrière).
stampede, February 10 and 11 in Lyon (Les Subs), March 26 in Marseille (Klap), April 3 at the Théâtre Auditorium in Poitiers, April 7 to 10 in Bobigny (MC93), May 17 in Angers (Le Quai), May 20 in Roubaix (The Public Condition).
GrooveFebruary 11 in Rezé (La Soufflerie), May 2 in Paris (Cartier Foundation), May 5 in Lyon (Les Subs).
Nebula, February 15 and 16 in Montpellier (ICI-CCN), March 23 in Grenoble (Pacific), March 25 in Villeurbanne (Festival Chaos Danse), March 30 in Roubaix (Le Gymnase), June 7 and 8 at the Atelier de Paris ( June Festival Events).