October 15-16
Talking about your art work by Albane Guinet-Ahrens & Virginie Dupray
How do I talk to an art operator / presenter about my work? How do I position myself? What frameworks should be set? What are my expectations? What preparation should be made, if any? Drawing on the participants' own experiences, this workshop mixed collective reflection, group work and role-playing to explore what is at stake for the artist and the professional in these first exchanges, which are often decisive for future collaborations.
Albane Guinet-Ahrens currently co-leads La Belle Ouvrage, a support organization for professionals in the cultural field, which she founded together with Clara Rousseau and Laure Guazzoni in 2006. As a consultant and as a trainer, she supports teams and individual artists, producers, directors, presenters, and others. Her background includes extensive experience in theatres and venues (such as Le Volcan, Scène Nationale du Havre, and Parc de la Villette, Paris) as well as collaborations with dance and performance artists within a production office. She holds degrees in economics and management and psycho-sociology, using tools from production and administration fields, as well as facilitation and animation schemes. Today, La Belle Ouvrage is run by a team of 14 professionals who implement training programmes, skills assessments, team and individual support, as well as mediation services, all aimed at supporting individuals across various cultural professions.
Trained in European economics (HEC - Paris and the University of Cologne) and in history of art, Virginie Dupray first held positions in communications and public relations at the Institut français in London and, from 1999 to 2003, at the Centre national de la danse in Pantin. From 2000 onwards, several encounters led her towards the African continent. In 2001-2003, she produced, under Nganti Towo’s direction, two editions of the Kaay Fecc festival in Senegal (2001-2003), then was the administrator of the Scénographies urbaines in Kinshasa in 2006-2007. But it is above all within the Studios Kabako, alongside Faustin Linyekula, that she develops numerous projects from 2003 onwards. Executive director of the structure until 2021, she accompanied the production and dissemination of Faustin Linyekula's creations and projects, as well as those of other artists in the fields of dance, theatre, music and film. In collaboration with the association 1er Temps / Andréya Ouamba and CulturArte / Panaibra Canda, she wrote and directed Pamoja, a pan-African residency and creation programme between Kisangani, Dakar and Maputo, funded by the European Union (2012-2015). Today, as an independent producer, she accompanies three exceptional women, Nadia Beugré, Dorothée Munyaneza and Marcela Santander. She has also been collaborating with Nacera Belaza. In 2021-22, she wrote for the MC93 in Bobigny Common Stories, a 3-year Creative Europe programme she is now coordinating. She is a member of the committee of experts for the dance programme of the Institut français Paris. She regularly teaches cultural management and production in DRCongo, Ivory Coast, Tunisia and beyond.
October 18
Conversation with Gisèle Vienne
Gisèle Vienne discussed the issues related to perception in her work and staging. What we learn to see or hear, and perhaps even more so, what we learn not to see and not to hear, raises questions about the hierarchies of perception. Why do we learn or unlearn certain things, and in service of which order? How can we shake and shift this order by questioning the related perceptive structures to invent, through a new perception encoding, a future world that would be more equal, respectful fairer, smarter? By inventing new artistic forms, we are contributing to this new encoding of perception. It is what is considered to be silent, what should not be heard, the silences of bodies and their stillness, that I’m trying to learn to hear and allow to speak.
Gisèle Vienne is a Franco-Austrian artist, choreographer and director. After graduating in Philosophy and Music, she studied at the Ecole Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette. Over the past 20 years, she has been touring her work in Europe as well as in Asia and America. Gisèle Vienne’s photographs and installations have been shown in various museums, including the New York Whitney Museum, the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires, the Centre d’art Contemporain de Genève, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. In 2024/2025, she will be presenting two new exhibitions for the Contemporary Art Centre, Haus am Waldsee, and the Georg Kolbe Museum.
October19-21
Workshop with Sandra Iché
During this 3-day workshop, C-LAB artists dedicated collective time, focus and critical sense to their different projects. Which stage have they reached? What is still missing, according to the author(s), according to the performer(s), according to the spectator(s)? How can collective feedback support the final process of each creation and its clarification before the piece presentation meet an audience in November 2024? To create an appropriate and stimulating context, Sandra Iché introduced different practices, borrowed and twisted from various disciplines: dance, theatre but also sociology, history, collective organizing... The proposed journey embraced notions of genealogy, legacy and transmission, the real and the prescribed, space and time, archives, dreams and future.
Based in Marseille, Sandra Iché is a performing artist and a member of the Travaux Publics collective of artists and social science researchers. Trained at P.A.R.T. S (Performing Art and Training Studios, Brussels) from 2003 to 2006, she became a permanent member of the Compagnie Maguy Marin - Centre Chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape from 2006 to 2010. Since then, she has written plays combining documentary research and theatrical creation. Her approach is characterised by the combination of artistic thinking and practices with social science fields. Since 2020, Sandra Iché and other members of the Travaux publics collective have been working on a long-term investigation and creative project with a group of social workers from Seine-Saint-Denis, entitled ‘Le Social Brû(il)le’, a project accompanied by MC93.
October 24-25
Masterclass with Calixto Neto
In this workshop, Neto shared questions and practices drawn from the processes of his latest creations, which continue to inform his current artistic reflections and approaches. Together, with the C-LAB artists, they created moments of exchange where perspectives were shifted and notions of technique, excellence, and virtuosity challenged. Fragility and vulnerability were at the heart of the discussion, turned into tools of strength and power to question norms, hierarchies, power structures, and historical narratives.
Calixto Neto is originally from Recife, Brazil, and has been living in France since 2013. He trained in theatre at the Federal University of Pernambuco, then in dance at the Experimental Dance Group, in Recife, before taking the master's degree in choreography ex.e.r.ce at the CCN of Montpellier. During his studies, he created the solo petites explosions as well as the duet Pipoca, with Bruno Freire. oh!rage, his second solo, gives visibility to minority bodies and identities and is interested in "peripheral" dances. Member of Lia Rodrigues' company from 2007 to 2013, Calixto Neto is also a performer in the creations of Anne Collod, Mette Ingvartsen, Eve Magot (formerly Kevin Jean) or Luiz de Abreu, whose famous piece O Samba do Crioulo Doido he reenacted in 2020 as part of the Panorama festival at the CND in Pantin. In May 2021 he created Outrar upon the invitation of Lia Rodrigues during the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, in Brussels. In 2021, he premiered Feijoada. In 2022, he launched Crazy Evil Night, a project around the life and work of Julius Eastman, in the frame of Kunstenfestivaldesarts, followed in 2023 by the solo IL FAUX.
October 24
Open studio
C-LAB artists presented an excerpt of their projects in front of local programmers and MC93 team, as well as Youness Anzane, the guest dramaturge who accompanied the last loop in Brussels.
