WITH LA MAISON DU THÉÂTRE
Show from 6 years
Autarcie (….) is a game of strategy where, for 50 minutes, four dancers engage in a frantic ritual, alternating between forward-facing dance moves and free digression. They transform their respective dance specialities of breakdance, popping and waacking into an abstract vocabulary, establishing their powerful individualities on stage and thrusting themselves into the space in pursuit of territory, alliances and hierarchy. The front of the stage is the rallying point where the dancers come together and devise a warrior dance directed at the audience. The inner workings of this restless "tribe" with all the power struggles that ensue and the search for possible points of harmony, thus unfold on stage, to the pulsating, unbridled rhythms of the percussive organic beat.
ANNE NGUYEN
Anne Nguyen founded the par Terre Dance Company in 2005. As a specialist of breakdance, she is familiar with the world of hip-hop battles, and aims to make use of technical excellence in each of the specialties of hip-hop dancing. Influenced by her scientific background, she deconstructs hip-hop body languages by setting on them geometrical constraints that open up new choreographic spaces: transformation of the centrifugal force of breakdance into linear patterns, displacement of the front-view forms of Popping into side-view frames. The way she builds movement in space is determined by the role she gives to the observer or partner. Anne’s productions convey a feeling of abstraction. Her choreographies are based on constraint and game principles. She focuses mainly on desynchronizing homogenous forms, on action-reaction principles and on contact, which is not commonly used in hip-hop dancing. In order to bring the dancers to share reduced vital spaces, she designs exercises with rules inspired by her practice of martial arts.
Anne Nguyen is currently working with sixteen hip hop dancers (breakers and poppers) on different touring productions, and she herself performs in several of them. Anne Nguyen’s first production, the solo Square Root (2007) relates the geometry found in breakdance movements to the contemporary urban environment. It combines mathematical dance compositions with some of Anne’s poems. The solo won second prize in the Masdanza contemporary choreography competition in 2009. Anne Nguyen also choreographed Keep it Funky! (2007), a Locking (funk dance) piece devised for six lockers, and Spirit of the Underground (2008), a performance for five dancers and one actress, on the themes of contact and dreams. Her duet Yonder Woman (2010), an experimental piece for two super heroines, analyzes the notion of performance through game-play based on linear progress and relationship behaviors. Her recent 2012 production PROMENADE OBLIGATOIRE is a one-hour walk for eight poppers, who undertake an uninterrupted journey along a timeline, in an exploration of the different possibilities of “being together”. In Anne’s 2013 production for her female quartet Autarcie (....), she explores the internal workings of an agitated “tribe”, with all the power stakes that this entails. She just created in March 2014 bal.exe, a show in two parts made of two "mechanicals balls set to chamber music (2014 - 1891)", in which eight poppers form duos to dance to their electric version of the music of Brahms, Bach, Biber and Connesson, performed on stage by five classical musicians. For 2016, Anne Nguyen also plans to devise a new dance piece for eight B-boys called Kata which will embody her vision of breakdance as a modern martial art.
Very keen on collaborations and cross-referencing between artistic network. Anne created in February 2014 the piece i as part of the trilogy for six dancers and three choreographers La preuve par l’autre commissioned by the Malka Dance Company. She is also working as choreographic adviser to Australian choreographer, Nick Power, in Sydney for his 2014 production Cypher.
Dancer and choreographer of the par Terre Dance Company, Anne Nguyen is first and foremost a b-girl, specializing in hip hop floor works. She has performed with the hip hop and contemporary dance companies Black Blanc Beur, Faustin Linyekula and Salia Nï Seydou. She formed part of the breakdance crews RedMask, Phase T, Def Dogz and Créteil Style in Paris, and has taken part in hundreds of battles, either solo or in a group, winning several high-profile competitions, such as IBE 2004, BOTY 2005 and has served as judge on many others, including BOTY 2006 and Redbull BC One 2007. She also makes an appearance in the documentary film Planet B-Boy (2007). Anne Nguyen also writes poetry, short prose items and articles (Danser magazine, Repères, cahier de danse). Excerpts from her collection of poems, the Manual of the City Warrior, have been published in Graff It! magazine, on which she was chief editor of the dance section. Several pieces performed by the Company incorporate Anne Nguyen’s texts, recorded or spoken (Square Root, Spirit of the Underground). Anne teaches hip hop dance using a method based on posture, the deconstruction of dance moves and their subsequent deployment within the performance space. Since 2012, she has taught a technical and theoretical workshop on hip hop dance at the University of Sciences Po Paris, called Hip hop, a contemporary culture.
