Théophile Bensusan (l.), creation entrepreneur, dance performer, La Fabrique de la Danse, Paris. Photo © Emmanuelle Stäuble
“Orianne Vilmer has energy”. That’s what comes to mind as I am sitting down for the chat. Maybe it’s just that her name reminds me of the excellent Oriana Fallacci, interviewer of almost all the egregious men-of-power of the 20th century. Like Fallacci, Vilmer’s radiates that kind of natural-born energy and wit old Father William in the Lewis Carroll nursery rhyme has. I have the feeling that, if she chooses, like the unsinkable father, she can successfully clarify a quantum paradox with a bon mot while idly balancing an eel on the tip of her nose.
Indeed, there are proofs that Vilmer does have her wits about her and is, in fact, as energetic, cultivated, and capable as my first impression suggests.
After all, I am talking to her because she’s the co-founder and guiding spirit – along with the veteran choreographer and dancer Christine Bastin – of La Fabrique de la Danse (“The Dance Factory”), a Paris dance school with a unique learning proposition.
For instance, as of this writing, as far as either La Fabrique, or I, can determine, the school is the only one in Paris, in the whole world, where you can learn the ins and outs of the choreographer’s métier and get official certification for it. That’s because, as of July, France’s national skills and competences register, Répertoire national des certifications professionnelles, RNCP, has included those required in a choreographer. La Fabrique is the institution with a curriculum that meets the requirements.
I think it’s safe to say that Vilmer is a dance performer with a scientific background and serious business experience rather than some other way around.
In her school years, she took up classic dance and earned praise and prizes for it. Then, at the Paris Conservatory, she practiced contemporary dance for two years under the eyes of teachers such as Peter Goss, Joëlle Mazet and Susan Alexander.
She then turned away from dance training to prepare for life widely, taking degrees in engineering and mathematics – France’s educative equivalents of, say, in US terms, Harvard law with a stint in a graduate school of politics. She followed on with work in international corporate management, where, among other things, she contributed proudly and personally, she says, to ESG charter projects.
While in the corporate web Vilmer successfully kept up her dance. In fact, in a recent conversation with Christine Bastin, the latter went out of her way more than once to emphasize that Vilmer is a talented dance performer and choreographer. Indeed, in December, she’ll premier M51, a dance performance for 54 persons (in which she will perform), co-written with La Fabrique associate Emmanuelle Simon, with a digital scene by Damien Serban and original music by Baptiste Lagrave. As I say, energy, wit.
In 2010, Vilmer founded the amateur dance troupe Danse en Seine, whose stated mission is to “re-invent” the concept of amateur dance and dream “ambitious dreams”. In 2013, the troupe wanted to perform Gueule de Loup (“Wolf’s Maw”), Christine Bastin’s dance performance for five created for the 1992 Lyon Biennale de la danse.
That meeting seems to have been one of minds. In 2015, Vilmer and Bastin set up La Fabrique. Vilmer became president, using her energy wit and experience to do the necessary entrepreneurship and general management. Bastin became artistic director, contributing her choreography skills and experience to building and refining the school’s unique offering.
The idea of La Fabrique then, as now, was/is to turn out a “finished product”, a skilled dance performer, surely, but also a competent and efficacious creator.
It turns out that, as in many other contemporary endeavors, say, independent journalism or scriptwriting, creativity is not sufficient to a dance performer’s professional success. A body has to produce, too: administrate, manage and communicate.
When she speaks of educational goals, Vilmer says La Fabrique looks to train up “creation entrepreneurs”. She insists on, underlines, emphasizes the word “entrepreneur” as opposed to “manager”). She then describes La Fabrique as a “choreography incubator”, saying the heart of dance performance is “creation, a process very much personal to the creator, that needs to find nourishment and support from the outside” …
In other words, in choreography, it’s not just fulfilled intentions and figures that lead to success but also, as in other undertakings, people, lights, sound, stage and box office! So, even the most inner-directed dance performance auteurneeds to develop the arts of the entrepreneur: finding the resources and gaining support of others for the dance project.
A successful choreographer, Vilmer says, is a dance performance auteur who understands how to be an entrepreneur of dance creation. That’s why La Fabrique’s certification cursus aims to package it as training in “creation entrepreneurship”: understanding better how a dance performer creates, how they identify and analyze their needs and seek out the aids and supports that enable choreographic production …
… Why. Yes. I think so, too.
Orianne Vilmer and her La Fabrique de la Danse certainly do offer a real learning opportunity.
The pre-requisites and conditions of La Fabrique’s choreography cursus are analogous to a continuing-education MBA. For detailed information, click Fabrique de la Danse or call Ilyana Koura, the school’s personal development coordinator, during business hours (GMT+1) at (+33) 184 79 4534.
For more information on the professional status of choreographers, contact Chorégraphes Associé.e.s., France’s choreographer’s union
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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON
