La Fabrique

Ever year, the CN D gives a big dance company carte blanche for a weekend. Performances, classes, workshops, exhibition: La Fabrique’s artistic approach is multi-faceted and aimed at people from every background, professionals and amateurs. Following on from the Ballet de Lorraine and the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, DANCE ON ENSEMBLE, a company devoted to dancers over the age of 40, is taking over the CN D’s spaces and offers an overview of its repertoire and its innovative practices.

This young company, launched in 2015 by Madeline Ritter, is paradoxically made up of performers over the age of 40, who elsewhere would already be over the retirement age for dancers. Based in Berlin and inspired by the explicit aim of drawing attention to the question of age and aging in the dance world, the DANCE ON company has since put together an enviable repertoire, which shows through practice that experience is above all a synonym of artistic maturity.

The artistic director of DANCE ON ENSEMBLE is Christopher Roman, a leading performer who became director of The Forsythe Company. Under the aegis of William Forsythe, the young dancers together with their colleagues over the ago of 50 are equally energetic. Christopher Roman has constantly remained true to this principle: DANCE ON ENSEMBLE’s six dancers offer a wealth of experience, physical discipline and intellectual flexibility that enable them to interact on an equal footing with the guest choreographers.

At the CN D, DANCE ON ENSEMBLE will perform several major collaborations. With Tenacity of Space, the dancers encounter the experimental world of Deborah Hay, a leading figure of postmodern dance since the 1960s. Two mixed programmes involve William Forsythe, who created a duo for the company titled Catalogue (First Edition), and the young Belgian choreographer Jan Martens, who continued his work on the human with Man Made. An original collaboration with the Lebanese director Rabih Mroué completes the first programme, while the second celebrates the work of Lucinda Childs – whose archives are today preserved at the CN D – with Katema, a solo from 1978 recreated specially for Ty Boomershine. DANCE ON ENSEMBLE will also be occupying the CN D with a series of extracts from 7 Dialogues, a project bringing together a dancer and a choreographer or director of his choosing (American Beth Gill and Brit Lucy Suggate will be taking part, as will Tim Etchells, director of Forced Entertainment, the Bulgarian artist Ivo Dimchev, and Noé Soulier) – an opportunity to discover the artistic personality of the company’s members. The classes and workshops that will be organised during the weekend will reflect the eclectic backgrounds of the members of Dance On, from Forsythe to Cunningham, as well as classical technique, and some will be tailored for the general public – people of all ages, of course.

La Fabrique DANCE ON ENSEMBLE also includes workshops and morning classes, as well as a workshop for the general public.