One week, ten international choreographers, a intensive workshop, a choreographic project, a personalized follow-up… Comeback on the adventure of the Business Lab for Choreographers!
Photo: Emmanuelle Stäuble
July 2018, under the sunny sky of Paris, the splendid facilities of the Carreau du Temple keep their peaceful atmosphere, whereas a cosmopolit gang heads toward the huge Studio de Flore. Here, people speak english, discover accents, cultures, and above all exchange on this choreographic diversity brought by 10 choreographers coming from all parts of the world. They are Indian, American, Chilean, Brazilian, Greek, French, and gather around this emulation driven by/arising from the same desire: learn, discover, strengthen and enrich their choreographic panel throughout the Business Lab for Choreographers.
Every morning they meet with Christine Bastin, a choreographer and artistic director of La Fabrique de la Danse, to guide this choreographic research all week long. In the wide glazed hall of the Carreau du Temple, one can catch a glimpse of moving figures, perceiving space and their sensations. Body awakening, improvisation workshops, discovery of everyone’s style are what introduce every days, before a sunny lunch break at the square du temple, two steps far from the studio. Then the day can continue with a more scolar framework, in which our international dancers attend to workshops on lighting, communication, management, production and sharing within a company, to broaden their field of knowledge apart from pure choreographic composition. Here they write production plannings, they think about the best way to make feedback to their dancers. Beyond the knowledge of each member of the team from La Fabrique de la Danse, the afternoon workshops are the opportunity to exchange, talk, learn from the methods and expertise of everyone. Throughout these days full of activities, the choreographers at the BLC received visits from several cultural organisations of Paris, such as ONDA (National Office of Artistic Diffusion) and la Cité Internationale des Arts. They thus could learn about various measures, organisms, programs made available for artists to foster their activity, and hence broaden their knowledges about possible feasible subsidies from which they can profit as choreographers.
And in the evening, besides dinners opportune to relax and tighten the relationships between our choreographers, a “failure dinner” has been held by the agency Gibraltar. The team of La Fabrique de la Danse also outlined the tools that the company offer them to ease their choreographic composition, especially Dancenote. Among two evening hikes in Paris, our cosmopolitan gang gather on the water’s edge of the Canal St Martin for a lunch, or in a café over a drink, or even in the red seats of the Palais des Glaces for a café-théâtre. Ideal moments to discover each other in an other context than in a dance studio!
Then comes the Saturday, last moment of this intense week, when our team of choreographers open the doors of the studio to the eye of the public, eager to discover the outcome of these days full of exchanges and research. In the afternoon, Christine Bastin takes time with each of the choreographers for an individual feedback, and answers to the questions left unanswered or appeared during the week. Everyone has enriched from the experience and the style of each, from the knowledges and the dynamism of the team of La Fabrique de la Danse. Everybody took on the challenge to stay sat in a classroom every afternoon and leave the Business Lab For Choreographers with a larger base of technical and administrative knowledge to run their company. But most of all with a significant choreographic open mind, new friendships, and a head full of memories! Thank you all for this amazing week!
Meet the choreographers below! Marine, from Agency Gibraltar made some silent portraits: one minute gazing at each other, in perfect silence!
