This year the Auckland Arts Festival will be presenting four contemporary French choreographers under the umbrella of FranceDance with performances by Maguy Marin, Jérôme Bel, Rachid Ouramdane and Gregory Maqoma
Auckland Arts Festival
France Dance
This year the Auckland Arts Festival will be presenting four contemporary French choreographers under the umbrella of FranceDance with performances by Maguy Marin, Jérôme Bel, Rachid Ouramdane and Gregory Maqoma
Maguy Marin is a bold choreographer who has been described as a giant of modern dance. For over three decades her work, admired for its wit, depth of ideas and assured style has solidified her formidable reputation in European and International modern dance theatre.
Marin’s pieces reflect her training as both a dancer and theatre director who consistently blurs the boundaries between theatre and dance. Marin’s renowned masterpiece “May B” is a homage to Irish playwright Samuel Beckett with the dancers gesturing at each other with exaggerated movements. The Beckettian character futile attempts to communicate without speech or words make for some comic, absurd and heartbreaking theatrical moments.
Jérôme Bel has been exporting his deliberately controversial brand of choreography around the world for the last 17 years. A graduate of the National de Danse Contemporaine of Angers, Bel has choreographed over a dozen wide-ranging shows. His repertoire is incredibly varied showcasing staged conversations, solo performances and cross-culture group works. “The Show Must Go On”, Bel’s most lauded and notorious work, brings together 20 performers, nineteen pop songs and one DJ. “The Show Must Go On”, like most of Bel’s works, asks what it means to dance in a modern era and scrutinizes the relationship between performers and audiences. In Auckland, using a process repeated in all countries where the show is produced, twenty performers from across New Zealand with varying degrees of dance experience will be working with a team of Bel’s choreographers to create a local version of the work.
Rachid Ouramdane, despite his youth, has an impressive legacy of dance and choreographic experience. He has worked with some of the most accomplished choreographers in the world, among them Hervé Robbe and Meg Stuart, and in 13 years of choreography has created 15 intriguing and challenging shows which have set him apart as a leading choreographer of his generation. Ouramdane’s work asks big questions. Where do the boundaries of identity lie? How can dance be channelled to reveal traumatic and pleasurable experiences? How does one express a history of suffering and violence? In Auckland he performs “Loin”, a compelling solo work in which he wrestles with these monumental themes using an intimate and impassioned physicality and an approach to dance that draws upon the tools of his generation – video testimonies, sophisticated lighting and pre-recorded soundscapes.
Gregory Maqoma is a dance hero to many in his home country of South Africa, a much admired, energetic figurehead whose inspired and exciting choreography has earned him much acclaim. While he was still in his teens Maqoma formed his own experimental dance troupe, before commencing formal training in the 1990s, and then founding Vuyani Dance Theatre in 1999. He is now a recognised leader in the field of contemporary African dance. For Auckland Arts Festival Maqoma performs his riveting autobiographical work “Beautiful Me”, an entrancing and hypnotic fusion of movement and spoken word developed in collaboration with three of Maqoma’s contemporaries, brilliant choreographers Akram Khan (UK), Fautin Linyekula (Congo) and Vincent Mantsoe (South Africa). Similarly to Rachid Oramdane’s use of autobiographical material, the work, as with other of Maqoma’s creations, explores the social, spiritual and physical environment that have shaped and influenced him.
