Among other participants, Núria Guiu is presenting her latest creation, Spiritual Boyfriends, as part of the European professional platform; Companyia Maduixa is offering their acknowledged show perched on stilts, Mulïer; lastly, the programme Danser Encore from the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon joints a Marcos Morau choreography. The festival is also showing Acro-Danse, a French, German and Catalan workshop with the presence of the Catalan company Moveo.
The Dance Biennale holds its 19th edition in 2021. After numerous twists due to the event’s postponements caused by the pandemic, the festival is finally hosting around forty international companies from the end of May until October in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. The festival aims at promoting the young artists scene and celebrating the French and international creativity –with a special focus in Africa as part of Saison Africa 2020 of Institut Française–. As usual, it will show many different activities, among which the professional’s event Focus Danse on its 7th edition, the parade for inclusion, or the new Fagor Experience, a new strand that will gather young people across greater Lyon. This great dance event will also count this year with Catalan and Valencian participation with the following shows:
Núria Guiu: Spiritual Boyfriends
Thursday, 10 June, 5.30pm // Les SUBS (Lyon) and online
For professionals exclusively
The new solo by Núria Guiu Sagarra takes a humorous look at matters of the body in relation to the spiritual experience of yoga and the issue of power. With the use of pictorial materials and autobiographical documents, the Catalan choreographer and yoga expert revisits the history of yoga poses while investigating the notions of desire and emotion. The artist shows how the practice of postural yoga exerts indirect power in our way of constructing our personal identity, subject to the canons of beauty, health or gender. Alone on stage, Núria Guiu employs a drone as a metaphor for control between these identity concepts and the Internet.
In June 29th, the choreographer and dancer is also participating with this piece at the Catalan Focus of the Festival des 7 Collines in Saint-Étienne, with the support of Institut Ramon Llull. More info here
Companyia Maduixa. Mulïer
Wednesday, 26 May, 7.30pm // Le Sémaphore (Irigny)
Friday, 28 May, 7.30pm // Théâtre Théo Argence (Saint-Priest)
Saturday, 29 May, 7pm // Espace culturel l’Atrium (Tassin-la-demi-lune)
Friday, 1 October, 8.30pm // Centre Culturel Les Quinconces (Vals-les-Bains)
Saturday, 2 October, 8pm // Théâtre de Roanne
Sunday, 3 October, 8pm // Le Toboggan (Décines)
Mulïer (2016) is a show of dance on stilts performed by five amazons through a dazzling ballet performed in unison as a tribute to all women. The show was born from the need of Valencian artistic director Joan Santacreu to explore feminine identity and to unleash “the wild and free side of feminine nature that various civilizations have sought to domesticate throughout history”. The five female dancers of Mulïer, perched on stilts, play with the notions of balance, power and height to evoke women, their energy, aspirations and struggles. The gestural richness and precision, the sensitivity and sincerity of the dancers get along in a sublime way the constant search for poetry and emotion of the company.
Since its foundation in 2004, Companyia Maduixa elaborates artistic hall and street theatre plays for all audiences. Research and a mix of disciplines are the creative engine of each production. Their main objective is to explore new scenic languages and to risk by always creating their own original stories. The company has acquired a unique style always present in their productions. It is the result of dance fusion, plastic arts and technology, which combined with the body of the interpreters, derives in huge visual poetic images.
Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, with Love, by Marcos Morau
Saturday, 5 June, 7.30pm // Les SUBS (Lió)
Sunday, 6 June, 4pm and 7pm // Les SUBS (Lió)
In the spring of 2020, the new director of the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon Julie Guibert created the program Danser Encore. Choreographers were invited to write a solo for the Ballet’s 30 dancers. For the 2021 Biennale, the pieces of choreographers Marcos Morau, Claire Bardainne and Adrien Mondot, Rachid Ouramdane, Nina Santes and Noé Soulier will be presented. Each piece creates a unique story with the chosen performer, and shows a specific aesthetic for each choreographer. The solos focus on subjects such as appearance-disappearance, the limits of perception, the faculty of memory, the body’s changes and its fragmented exploration, and they all relate by moving from one world to another in a continuous way.
This new work by Marcos Morau (director of the company La Veronal since 2005) for the Opéra national de Lyon plays with the limits of perception and the
loss of spirit at the frontiers of imagination. The dancer’s body, here tied to a cardboard box in an almost hypnotic and mysterious way, explores the limits of gravity, the unknown and play, showing how exciting it can be to get lost in a simulation or a lie that we created ourselves. The relationship between the object and the body, between the inanimate and the living, between what we don’t see and what we see, between tension and force, produces a complex encounter that pushes the performer to the edge of all logic.
French-German-Catalan workshop on Acro-Danse
Monday 7th - Monday 14th of June // Lyon
Held by Plattform (the Franco-German platform for young creators), this workshop will let young artists from France, Germany and Catalonia explore the ties between dance and acrobatics while discovering the Dance Biennale. Conceived by the dancer Julia Christ and the choreographer Florian Bilbao with the support of OFAJ and the region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, this workshop was created in collaboration with the company and scenic arts school Moveo in Barcelona. After an online edition in 2021, this exchange of artistic practices will take place in person from 7th – 14th June 2021 in Lyon.
