Project Description

This Dancerie: The Paris Project
A collaboration project by Tony Whitfield, Sebastiano d'Ayala Valva, Klaus Fruchtnis, Thierry Micouin, Nils Nusens, Patricio Sarmiento and Andrew Alden


This Dancerie is a multi-event, multi-site, multi-media work that explores the ways in which gay men have created public expressions of desire despite mainstream prohibitions of manifestations of those aspects of their lives in the context of Paris as a complex historical cultural arena for this exploration.

The pretext of This Dancerie is urbanization as a prerequisite for homosexual subculture and the understanding that despite the absence of “gay ghettos, ” gay men developed and carried on forbidden lives in public it cities around the world. This Dancerie focuses on Paris as a cross-road of queer life in which, although, technically, homosexuality was legal since 1791, decency was legislated and under surveillance.

This Dancerie will create a series of foci on Paris as a site of refuge for queer men and the environments they historically frequented. Particular attention will be placed on developing narratives that include a range of differing intersections of class, race, creeds, ethnicities and gender the collaborators will develop a movement based-work for male groupings drawing upon culturally specific traditions. The role immigration plays in these narratives will also be underscored.

This Dancerie is a multi-event, multimedia collaborative work under the artistic direction of Tony Whitfield. This project will be a collaboration between Whitfield, as Executive Producer and Artistic Director, Thierry Micouin as Director of Choreography, media artist Klaus Fruchtnis as Technical Director, fashion designer Patricio Sarmiento, filmmaker Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva and composer/musician Nils Nussen, all from France and composer/ musician Andrew Alden, and filmmakers Joe Lumbroso and Dyana Winkler, from the United States. Eight to ten sites across the City where same sex desire has created a shifting landscape of criminalized activity, class-complicated entanglements, immigrant freedom, forbidden commerce, transgressive beauty and encoded seduction will be the context for short filmed dance/movement based narratives since 1870. Each three to five minute films will begin with a cruising ritual and be filmed in those spaces. For several evenings the films will be presented in situ as projected images activated by passersby movement. Ideally these installations would be debuted as part of Paris’ La Nuit Blanche in 2017.

These films would then be brought together into a single space to produce an additional evening long performance or “dance party” that would be digitally randomized and improvisationally scored for classical ensemble and world pop musicians. Ideally the space would be situated in a cultural center and include a live performance component that involved local gay residents. Various forms of social media will be employed to augment and reveal aspects of the project's narrative content during the culminating dance party and its scatter site installations.

Several aspects of this project should move it beyond the context of performance based works that explore cultural identity and history. They include: the site specific nature of the public installation that will seek to revive unknown queer histories in ways that immerse the audience in the projected work; the creation of apps that will allow the participant to access deeper know of the history behind the narrative they have stumbled into as well as information about the artwork itself and other components of the work at other sites across Paris as well as multifaceted entries into the "dance party."

It is anticipated that audiences for This Dancerie will include: post modern dance, experimental music, expanded cinema, public art and contemporary performing arts audiences. In addition general public members who are attending events associated with Paris' La Nuit Blanche 2017 and local commmunities adjacent to the various sites in which This Danceries' short constituent works will be situated.This project will seek to engage LGBTQI populations including scholars, artists, performers and youth. Social media, print and electronic media associated with La Nuit Blanche and the venue that will host the culminating event will be drawn upon in addition to apps established specifically for This Dancerie.

The primary goal is to reveal the queer past and present of Paris as an urban geography that has been multifaceted, ethnically, economically, and culturally diverse while also revealing those aspects of queer life that defy normalization, concealment behind closed doors challenge notions of "decency" are tied to desire and find expression despite histories of policing and surveillance. In addition this work will seek to engage collaborative, improvisational and interactive structures and technologies to create social points of entry and discussion among various queer communities across Paris and beyond as a means of expanding current discussions about same sex desire.


Thursday, May 15, 2014

Thierry Micouin's new project, Double Jack


Double Jack - teaser. from Thierry Micouin on Vimeo.


DOUBLE JACK / THIERRY MICOUIN

Third part of a trilogy initiated by a solo disorder of identity construction, Double Jack a challenge to interpreters: how, in spite of belonging to the genus, to re-incorporate in a gesture of man recorded in clichés of power as in his flaws.
On the plateau, an interactive sound installation consisting of five electric guitars instantly reacts to the movements of the dancer. They become leaders of an army of electrical cords and their movements trigger musical loops which gradually move within the scenic area. The composition is based on a three agreements borrowed standard rock'n'roll music writing, which can be configured as an echo danced gesture.

© photo Yueh Liu Chan
Design: Thierry Micouin
Choreography: Thierry Micouin with the help of Carole Gomes
Cast: Carole Gomes and Thierry Micouin
Music / interactive device: Pauline Boyer
Light: Erik Houllier
Artistic Advisor: Youness Anzane
With the help of Christophe Van Huffel for music
Duration 50 min / Production Association TM Project
Co: The Triangle - Rennes, Le Cube , Centre for digital creation - Issy-les-Moulineaux;National Choreographic Centre Roubaix .
With the support of: DICREAM , Ministry of Culture and Communication (DRAC Bretagne)Région Bretagne , Rennes City , The Glass Menagerie - studio lab (Paris) Museum of Dance - CCNRB (Rennes)  Performing Arts in Britain ; CENTQUATRE Paris and CND for loan studio; CLEODE to support the hardware.

THIERRY Micouin
After studying medicine, Thierry Micouin forms dance and interpreter Philippe Minyana, Karine Saporta, Felix Ruckert, Mie Coquempot, Jesus Hidalgo, Valérie Onnis and Osman Khelili.
In 2002, he joined the company of Catherine Diverrès and has since ceased to work with her as a dancer but also videographer on his projects. It is also interpreted in the draft Charmatz since 2009 and Olivier Dubois since 2012.
In 2006, he created his first solo WHO ., autofiction that evokes the journey of his own adolescent identity construction. This piece, which also addresses the issue of cross-dressing, gender, sexuality, is the first part of a triptych about gender and male identity.
In 2009, he won the CulturesFrance program Hors les murs (Villa Medici) for a research project in New York around the escorting. There he meets on the way the interview filmed ten escorts and created his return a choreography and a video installation with these materials. This project with two sides, called Men at work, Go Slow! is the second part of the triptych initiated withWHO in 2006, the third being the project Double Jack . www.thierrymicouin.com




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