6 QUESTIONS: Cedric Andrieux - La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival

photo by Jamie Roque de la Cruz

French dancer Cedric Andrieux presents LES COMMUNS, a duet with Christophe Ives exploring "the encounter with the other," May 16-18, as part of both the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival and DANSE: A French-American Festival of Performance and Ideas. Here, he answers our six questions.

1. What is the history of your collaboration with Christophe Ives and what inspired you to make a duet exploring "the possibilities and limits" of your relationship?

Christophe and I have been friends for a very long time, since our time at the Paris National Conservatory of Music and Dance in the mid-90's. We remained friends all that time, but never got a chance to work and dance together. So this desire was the initial starting point for us. Early on in the process, our relationship revealed itself as an important component of whatever this piece would become, and so it needed to be addressed. It turned out to take a pretty central part in our process, and to be an issue complex enough, this relationship of ours. We were long time friends, but in this space, the dance studio, we had to find a new way to connect, we had to let go of who we thought the other one was, based on some very old memories, rebuild from scratch, and create some new common ground.

2. Do you find audiences in France and the US to have different tastes or reactions?

I think more than taste or reaction, it is mostly their expectation that is, to me, slightly different. For whatever cultural or historical reason, in France, people tend to be more critical, more precise in what they want to see, whereas, in the US, I do feel an openness to whatever is to come. There is less of an urge to judge, but more a will to understand.

3. What is most exciting and most challenging about performing a duet?

Mostly the relationship that first is created in the process of making the work, and then to see how this relationship evolves in the performance, in front of an audience. The challenging part is to use this relationship to help us create a dialogue with the audience, to bring the audience inside, with us. 

4. When did you know that you would that you wanted a career in the arts? 

My desire was actually not a career in the arts, per se. I only wanted to become a dancer. It is only as I became one that I started to open up my vision to the arts in a broader sense. The difficulty is to find ways to keep the desire alive as more questions arise throughout one's career.

5. Which artists have been inspiring you recently?

A few performances have stayed with me that I have seen recently: "Perturbation" from Krystian Lupa, "Germinal" from Antoine Defoort and Halory Goerger, "Doing While Doing" from Daniel Linehan, "The Second Freedom" from Leja Jurisic and Teja Reba, among others....

6. What does performing at La MaMa mean to you?

It will be the first time. Christophe and I are incredibly grateful to (La MaMa Moves! Curator) Nicky Paraiso for taking the chance to present our work. Our experience so far with the LaMaMa team as been fantastic, and we are so excited to come and perform here!

La MaMa presents 

Les Communs

May 16 – 18, 2014 
Friday & Saturday @ 7:30pm / Sunday @ 4pm

The First Floor Theatre @ La MaMa
74A East 4th Street
(between Bowery and Second Avenue)
New York, NY 10003

Tickets: $15 Adults / $10 Students and Seniors; ten tickets priced at $10 are available, in advance, for every performance via web, phone or box office as part of La MaMa's 10@$10 ticketing initiative. 10@$10 tickets not available day of show. 

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

6 Questions: Shlomi Tuizer - La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival

Shlomi Tuizer (left) and Edmond Russo / photo by Agathe Poupeny

Shlomi Tuizer, of Compagnie Affari-Esteri, was kind enough to answer 6 Questions for our blog in advance of his show EMBRACE in the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, co-presented as part of DANSE: A French American Festival of Performance and Ideas. 

1. What were your inspirations while creating Embrace?

One of our main preoccupations has always been the idea of relation. How do we relate to one another as social human beings and how does the individual situate himself as part of a group? We developed these notions in different ways through group pieces, and through our collaboration. We had not created a duet until embrace. We began by simply facing each other and from there finding variations in the way we embrace the other became essential. It’s not easy to summarize because we were inspired by many things on an every day basis, it could be something we saw on the street or an exhibition, a movie, a song…

2. Is your work influenced by a particular school, genre or teacher of dance?

We carry our personal history with us whether we create raptures or affiliations.

We both have a rather academic education and we both began our careers in big repertoire companies. After that we made particular choices that led us to focus on what kind of performers we wanted to be. We are always curious about new ways to explore and consider the body and movement so the influences are numerous. They pass through us and become a part of who we are.

3. What was it like collaborating with musician Oren Bloedow and poet Christina Clark?

Absolutely wonderful! Extremely rich and inspiring. They were the main sources of inspiration for the whole creative process. Oren is a very talented and sensitive musician with a great capacity to listen, to watch and to understand the profound sense of movement. Christina’s writing is personal and intelligent and she’s a sensitive performer as well. She recites her poetry throughout the piece. They collaborated beautifully with us and with each other and are in many ways the real voices of embrace.

4. Do international audiences receive your work differently than audiences in France?

The question or idea of sense is very much present in our work. A spectator’s point of view is very personal. There might be slight differences between audiences here or there because of the poems present in the piece are in English. This brings up variations on the great question of language and of what forms a full image of something in our perception – in our case. Is it the movement, the sense of the words, the lights, the sounds… or a combination of parts or all of these elements?

5. Which artist(s) in the DANSE festival are you most excited to see?

Even though they are all French, there are actually some that we never got to see in the past. There are many different propositions, different identities to explore- The intensity in D. Wampach’s work, the exciting and hip work of Chaignaud-Bengolea, the sheer beauty and sensitivity in the work of C. Rizzo to name but a few.

6. What does performing at La MaMa mean to you? 
It means a great deal for us. On the one hand, it is a wonderful opportunity for us to present our work in NYC in a place such as La MaMa with so much heritage and history - a place in constant movement through time. On the other hand, we are very excited because the very first steps of the creative process of embrace took place here in NYC, so in a way we have a feeling of bringing it back home. 

La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival presents

Embrace 

By Compagnie Affari-Esteri
May 2 – May 4, 2014

Fri & Sat: 10pm / Sun: 5:30pm

Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Students/Seniors; ten tickets prices at $10 are available for each performance, in advance only via phone, web or box office. 10 @ $10 not available day of show.

The Club at La MaMa
74 East 4th Street
(between Bowery and 2nd Avenue)
New York, NY 10003

Tickets and Info: Click Here