Festival Signes d’Automne 2022 at the Belleville Swan # 1: a right approach, time and place for contemporary dance [by Tracy Danison]

1. TonguesoutWel comeJoachim MaudetJean Gros-Abadie

“Wel come” by Joachim Maudet with Pauline Bigot and Sophie Lèbre, cie Les Vagues, produced for “Festival Signes d’Automne” 2022, Regard du Cygne. Photo © Jean Gros-Abadie

I ended the 2022 edition of the Signes d’Automne program at studio Regard du Cygne with a performance called Wel come by Joachim Maudet. On the corner of rues de Belleville and Pixerécourt in Paris’ Belleville neighborhood, “Regard of the Swan” has been hosting contemporary dance and performance since the 1980s. It continues the mission with brio.

Maudet’s work as a choreographer and performer is a good example of the little studio’s promotion of (I think so anyway) an Isadora Duncan-inspired “creative dance performance for all” agenda. Wel come succeeds a mix of slow and no movement and ventriloquism with a just-right spice of light, sound and space. In short, the work impresses with a thoughtful and respectful grasp of ordinary human perception and its choreographic uses; gets spectators musing and laughing.

In addition to Maudet’s creation, this year’s Signes d’Automne included two days of a “Festival S.O.U.M. – Soirée de co-création Franco-Coréenne”, an encore of Générations by Fabrice Ramalingom (a piece featured in The Best American Poetry this past spring), and a legacy retrieval in Julie Dubois’s l’Isadora Duncan, in which Dubois dances from her personal trove of (Isadora’s adopted daughter) Lisa Duncan’s work.

On the menu as well were the recurring adult and kid versions of “Spectacles Sauvages” – presentations of new creations or of productions new to Paris. This year, a last minute call gave three creditable new creations and one truly astonishing stand-up performance piece: Mécanique de l’invisible, by Gaëlle Gillieron; Parasite et bottes-de-plume, a very physical duo of … What? … “Behavioral typology”,  by performers Simon Peretti and Marius Bathaux; and Débordement, a choreography-music creation with Delphine Jungman and Aston Bonaparte performing with original music by Patrick Biyik. As a finale, En pièce jointe, a performance tour de force by Armande Sanseverino and Gaël Germain which brilliantly shows how things go when the digital stream stutters. To cap things off were events such as the conversations among dancers and spectators hosted by dancing philosopher Karima El Amrani and the Regard’s perennial “Family Day”, this time featuring Le Lapin et la Reine (“The Queen & the Rabbit”) in (French) Sign, hosted by dancer and choreographer Nina Vallon.

2.  YourehiredEnpiècejointe

“En pièce jointe” by Armande Sanseverino and Gaël Germain, produced for “Spectacles Sauvages”, Signes d’Automne 2022, Regard du Cygne. Photo © Jean Gros-Abadie

There’s a lot to say about each one of these varied performances, initiatives and events, but for my money, Fall 2022’s top bill goes to the two-day “Festival S.O.U.M. – Soirée de co-création Franco-Coréenne”. Festival S.O.U.M. is a (South) Korean contemporary dance outfit. The Soirée turned on mixing movement artists from Korea and locals in short co-creative residences and producing the results on the first evening – the artists had no previous experience of one another – and following on the next day with pieces from the repertoires of the visitors. It was a decided audience and an esthetic success.

Both a distant image of dance performance innovation and an echo of Regard’s dance-performance-for-all mission, the two-day Soirée held up a made-in-Korea mirror to a lot of what the studio tries to achieve on its own turf.

A general hunger for new stuff aside, people from the Europe culture sphere seem open to cultural production with a perspective from Korea – witness the film Parasite or the TV series Squid Game. Why not contemporary live-performance?

Like Taiwan, another place rooted in a strong and vibrant traditional culture that’s managed to transition into a liberal society, Korea’s seems a happening place for global contemporary culture. Unlike contemporary work from Taiwan, before Regard du Cygne’s program, the only live performance from Korea I have been able to get to know is the Zumba version of Gangnam Style – and I did that all on my own.  I think my situation in respect to live performance culture from Korea, let alone contemporary dance from Korea is pretty typical. So, good job for my culture, Regard programmers.

3.ShowingCouleursSOUM

“Couleurs” by Sun-Hoo Yoo, Marco Chenevier produced for “Festival S.O.U.M. – Soirée de co-création Franco-Coréenne,” 2022, Regard du Cygne. Photo © Jean Gros-Abadie

Whether in co-creation with locals or previously developed work, lovely and intriguing splashes of unfamiliar culture graced S.O.U.M.-inspired performance. But contemporary Dance, capital D, was clearly what was happening for everybody, performers, choreographers and spectators alike. S.O.U.M. choreographers and performers are full owners of a “global” art of contemporary dance, which like break dance, or hip-hop, is a world dance mode, by definition exotic for nobody and open to all.

As I say, Festival S.O.U.M. – Soirée de co-création Franco-Coréenne was an initiative with the right approach at the right time. Regard du Cygne was the right place to do it.

Regard is one of the last dance places, maybe the last independent contemporary dance place, in Paris intramuros where you can still see heretofore “untested” talent and movement art creativity. But the studio’s all-woman management and staff are not just prepared to look at and even take a chance on what an untested creator has got up to, the venue is optimized for the task. Taken materially and morally, Regard du Cygne creates the sense of “being-there-with”, the key, for me, to appreciating, especially, new, untested work.

Regard du Cygne is a materialization of an intimate setting.

Its railroad-flat style ticketing, reception, kitchen and bar area, along with a well-apportioned performance space of polished parquet, bare stone and ancient beams are better than functional. Seating on good Lego-block-like bleachers is perfectly adequate to the usual slightly-less-than hour-long dance performance, is flexible and wastes no space; light, sound, visuals and acoustics are as good as any.

An interior door at the top of the performance space leads into a building that serves as a back-stage and as dressing and stock rooms. Most important, perhaps, the building serves as the upper wall to the central cobblestone courtyard. The courtyard overflows with green, mostly flowering, plants; furnished with some camp tables, chairs and a bench, it’s a natural meeting space for spectators and creators alike.

Intimate, professional, unique, with deep roots in Paris’ contemporary dance performance scene, Regard du Cygne was the perfect venue for a debut of contemporary dance-performance from Korea.

I hope it becomes a permanent anchor point for Festival S.O.U.M.

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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON