Figure Libre
Supported by the Seine-Saint-Denis département, Free Figure is a project aimed at bringing together players in the social and cultural fields, by favouring access to culture for all, while contributing to the social integration of people in difficulty.
From December 2017 to July 2018, Free Figure brought together four players: the Seine-Saint-Denis département, the Compagnie Acajou, the medical-social centre SAMSAH COS 93 in Rosny-Sous-Bois and the CN D. For several months, a group made up of users in a situation of disability and professionals of the SAMSAH –social workers, occupational therapists, medical-social secretaries and medical-psychological assistants – discovered the choreographic world thanks to practical workshops at the CN D, led by dancers from the Compagnie Acajou, as well as encounters and shows in the region’s various cultural structures.
Through these themes of encountering and the imaginary, Free Figure intended to highlight for each of the participants their own definition of what dance does, how these dances inhabit our bodies and memories, and how we can share them within a group.
At the end of the project, a public presentation allowed the group to share some its answers.
The Humane Body – Ways of Seeing Dance
From 2016 to 2018, the European project The Humane Body brought together four European cultural structures, Impulstanz in Vienna, the Kaaitheater in Brussels, the CN D Centre national de la danse in Pantin and The Place in London, with the desire to make contemporary dance accessible to the visually impaired.
With this project, the point was to show that this handicap is not an obstacle against the reception of a dance show, and that it is also possible for dance to share its productions with a visually impaired public and a sighted public, at the same time.
As part of this project, several visually impaired people were invited to discover contemporary creation as spectators thank to audio-descriptions in four languages (English, French, German and Dutch) of two shows put on at the four partner sites: Sons of Sissy by Simon Mayer and L’œil la bouche et le reste (The Eye the Mouth and the Rest) by Volmir Cordeiro. The latter also gave some visually impaired people the possibility to participate in the choreographic writing of his creation during dance workshops in January 2017. As for the choreographers Mette Ingvartsen and Vera Tussing, they developed respectively a dance of listening and a dance of touch.