Foto: Alice Brazzit

About Aina Alegre

Aina Alegre is a choreographer, a dancer and a performer. After a multidisciplinary training in dance, theater and music in Barcelona, she joined the CNDC in Angers in 2007 where she developped choreographic objects constructed from different media: pieces for the stage and performances in hybrid spaces. In 2014, she founded the STUDIO FICTIF company in Paris in order to support her projects and creations. Since then, her work has beeń presented in various countries including Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Peru or Romania. Since 2023, Aina Alegre is co-director at Choreographic National Center of Grenoble. 

What are the main focuses and questions in your work? / Short description

Aina Alegre embraces choreographic creation as a means of opening up imaginary worlds around the body. Influenced by fiction as both genre and practice, her work explores the body in plastic environments, and her choreographic writing is closely linked to rhythm and music. Her work also focuses on notions of memory and the anthropology of gesture.
Alongside her stage projects, since 2018 she has been setting up the research and performance project STUDIES, with which she encounters people and territories and collects stories around practices and dances linked to the gestures of hammering and striking. She works on the theme of memory and archiving, using the spoken word as a choreographic driving force.

What project will you be working on during your residency?

In my work, there's always a need to question and revisit the first impulses that lead us to get involved in dance. I endeavor to observe the "root gestures" of certain pre-existing dances. I don't try to reproduce them, but rather to understand them and be moved by the energy that inhabits them, so as to be able to propose new forms of representation.
As a blend of solos, duets and group moments, FUGACES follows on from THIS IS NOT (an act of love & resistance) and SWING-MOTOR, a commission for the Young Ballet of the CNSMD of Lyon. Here, the group is once again the driving force behind the choreography. We're in a kind of ballroom, an arena, to summon up an electric and percussive energy. A writing of gestures and space where bodies will propel themselves, throw themselves into the dance, swing through steps, turns, jumps and contaminate themselves in percussive rhythms played live.
I'm in the process of furthering my research into the possible relationship between dance and music, with instrumentalists on stage. This time, it will be a percussionist-drummer.
This project also offers a cross-over of artistic languages. In FUGACES, I want to invoke the dances of bailaora Carmen Amaya through a free interpretation and give visibilitý to this figure who is part of the heritage and has contributed to the evolution of the art of flamenco and dance in general. A female dancer who, through her approach and her politico-cultural context, remains a contemporary voice.
What has always fascinated me about her and flamenco is that it's first and foremost about dances, I'd say, of anthropological and communal survival, practiced in particular by gypsy communities. A kind of expression of the existence of an oppressed people. An art that has also evolved, been shared, transmitted and hybridized... In this idea of hybridization of languages, and far from wishing to reproduce Carmen Amaya's dance, I'm rather looking to expand our subjective interpretations. The choreography will be based on textual and video archives. We're going to activate the idea of interpreting instead of speculating, transmitting, translating and reconstruct her dance through our contemporary practices, but free from the technique and style of flamenco.
Continuing my research and obsession with bodies that strike, that set themselves in rhythm, that produce through their dance a form of internal music, I weave here a geometric dance language that's hard-hitting, fast-paced and lightning-fast, with great suspensions. A dance that is both noisy and silent. We're going to make the space vibrate through light, music and rhythm, so that the bodies become charged, set themselves in motion, rebel and become energy channels.

Die in Stuttgart lebende Choreografin und Tänzerin Smadar Goshen ist in der Spielzeit 2023/2024 die Stipendiatin des Theater Freiburg im Rahmen des Netzwerks Grand Luxe. Sie wird über den Zeitraum von einem Jahr an verschiedenen Partnerhäusern des Netzwerks Residenzen realisieren und in diesen an ihrem aktuellen Projekt "Body that Stands" (AT) arbeiten. In der 70-minütigen zeitgenössischen Tanzperformance erforschen drei Tänzer_innen den Begriff des Widerstands und seine körperlichen Ausdrucksformen in verschiedenen Epochen der Menschheitsgeschichte. Das Stück fängt den "Zeitgeist" globaler politischer Herausforderungen ein und erforscht die starke Kraft des körperlichen Widerstands in verschiedenen Kulturen, Situationen und Methoden.

Stuttgart-based choreographer and dancer Smadar Goshen is a scholarship holder in the Grand Luxe network for the 2023/2024 season. She will realize residencies at various partner houses and work on her current project "Body that Stands" (AT) in them. In this 70-minute contemporary dance performance, three dancers explore the notion of resistance and its physical expressions in different eras of human history. The piece captures the "zeitgeist" of global political challenges and explores the powerful force of physical resistance in different cultures, situations and methods.

Kurze Bio / Short bio
Smadar Goshen ist Tänzerin, Choreografin und Lehrerin. Als zertifizierte Gyrotonic- und Gyrokinesis-Trainerin sowie Gaga-Lehrerin beschäftigt sie sich intensiv mit der individuellen Bewegungssprache, die ein wichtiger Bestandteil ihrer Arbeit mit den Tänzern und ihres kreativen Prozesses ist. Sie absolvierte ihren Bachelor-Abschluss in Tanz und ihren Master-Abschluss in Choreografie an der Jerusalem Academy for Music and Dance. Geboren in Israel, verlegte sie 2019 ihren Lebens- und Arbeitsmittelpunkt nach Stuttgart.

Ihr erstes Stück Urbania entstand 2011 für das Shades in Dance Festival im Suzanne Dellal Centre, Tel Aviv. Seitdem kreiert und performt sie ihre Stücke auf der ganzen Welt auf verschiedenen Plattformen. Seit 2020 produziert Smadar in Deutschland ihre eigenen freien Produktionen, neben Auftragskreationen wie dem Solo Kamma für die renommierte Tanzkompanie Gauthier Dance im Rahmen des "The Dying Swans Project" und dem Stück Moono für das Choreolab 2021 des Tanz.Labor Roxy in Ulm. Bis 2023 schuf sie die abendfüllenden Stücke Peninsula Flora, Rocking Women like Rock, Hoomans und Grand Noir. Sowie 2 kurze Solostücke, die im Rahmen des internationalen solo-tanz Theaterfestivals in Stuttgart aufgeführt wurden. Ihre Stücke überbrücken die Distanz zwischen Publikum und Performern.

Derzeit arbeitet sie an ihrem Solo Ken | ??, das am 30. November 2023 im Theater FITZ Premiere haben wird. Im aktuellen Jahrbuch der Zeitschrift tanz wurde Smadar Goshen als eine der 10 vielversprechendsten Tanzpioniere geehrt. In der Spielzeit 2024/25 ist sie Teil des Residenzprogramms des Netzwerks Réseau GRAND LUXE mit besonderer Unterstützung durch die Tanzabteilung des Theaters Freiburg.

Smadar Goshen is a dancer, choreographer and a teacher. As a certified Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis trainer as well as a Gaga teacher, she is intensively dealing with the individual language of movement, which is an important part of her work with the dancers and her creative process. She completed her bachelor's degree in dance and her master's degree in choreography at the Jerusalem Academy for Music and Dance. Born in Israel, she shifted her center of living and working to Stuttgart in 2019. 

Her first piece Urbania was created in 2011 for the Shades in Dance Festival at the Suzanne Dellal Centre, Tel Aviv. Since then, she has been creating and performing her pieces around the world on various platforms. Since 2020 Smadar produce’s her own independent productions in Germany, alongside commissioned creations such as the solo Kamma for the renowned dance company Gauthier Dance as part of "The Dying Swans Project", and the piece Moono for Choreolab 2021 by Tanz.Labor Roxy in Ulm. By 2023 she had created the full length pieces Peninsula Flora, Rocking Women like Rock, Hoomans and Grand Noir. As well as 2 short solo pieces which performed as part of the international solo-tanz theatre festival in Stuttgart. Her pieces bridge the distance between the audience and the performers. 

She is currently working on her solo Ken | ??, which will premiere at Theater FITZ on 30 November 2023. In the current yearbook of the magazine tanz, Smadar Goshen was honored as one of the 10 most promising dance pioneers. In the 2024/25 season, she is part of the residency programme of the Réseau GRAND LUXE network with special support from the Theater Freiburg's dance department.

Weitere Infos unter https://smadargoshen.com/

Das Duo COGNITIVE OVERLOAD wurde 2019 von Lucas Bassereau und Constance Diard gegründet. Es entstand aus dem gemeinsamen Wunsch heraus, eine Plattform zu schaffen, die der choreografischen Forschung und einer bestimmten Perspektive auf den Tanz gewidmet ist. Die beiden Künstler_innen möchten einen künstlerischen Ansatz entwickeln, der Forschung, Kreation und Vermittlung miteinander verbindet. Eine zentrale Frage ihrer Arbeit ist unter anderem, wie abstrakte Ideen verkörpert werden können und wie ihnen eine materielle und teilbare Realität verleiht werden kann. Ein weiterer zentraler Punkt ihres Ansatzes ist die Beziehung zwischen Kognition und Bewegung. Die beiden experimentieren mit der Überlastung unserer kognitiven Grenzen, um darüber einen Zustand erhöhter Wahrnehmung zu erreichen.  

Who are you? / Short bio
We are Constance Diard and Lucas Bassereau. We both have a career as dancers for different choreographers and we started to work and create together in 2019. Last season in 2023 we created two works: Ambiance, une installation chorégraphique et sonore - a 3 hour dance and sound installation with 5 dancers and 1 musician for La Villa Cavrois. And Big Bang - a dance piece made for the stage in which we both dance, built as a triptych with 2 solos and a duet

What are the main focuses and questions in your work? / Short description
Our work focuses in creating abstract forms and performances and how to make them dialog with other medias as sound, architecture, light etc… Another central point of our approach is the relationship between cognition and movement. We are looking to what extent it is possible to superpose informations of several kinds, to increase our cognitive load: to come close to the limits of "cognitive overload".

What project will you be working on during your residency?
During our residency we will be looking at new ideas for our next projects. It is the very beginning of a new chapter for us, trying to clarify some tools we already work with and understand how to share them with a large audience.

What do you expect from your residency? What are you looking forward to?
We hope to find new ways to articulate ideas and processes we work with since a while. But also to go further with them as movements practices and understand how to share them with the audience, both verbally or physically.

What inspires you?
We both have a strong interest for sciences such as mathematics and physics. In the creation process, we often talk about physical phenomena that fascinate us. We are inspired by the way scientists can describe entities like time, space, movement and we like to play with those ideas to give them a choreographic shape.

Links to Website/Instagram/Facebook/etc.
https://cognitiveoverload.squarespace.com/
https://www.instagram.com/cog.ove/   

Julien was born in Brussels in 1985. He began dancing through the practice of Breakdance. Alongside his dance pursuits, he studied physiotherapy at the Free University of Brussels and obtained a Master's degree in 2009. He self-taught himself in artistic creation through encounters, interdisciplinary exchange projects, and collective creations. His approach combines the virtuosity of his Hip-Hop dance background with an exploration of intimacy and sensitivity. His work draws inspiration from encounters, diverse practices, and life experiences. Through hybrid choreographic forms, he explores the porosity between the reality experienced by the individual internally and the reality perceived by others externally. His interest lies in the transition from the real world to the stage space, with the body serving as a medium/witness of this transformation. Among his themes of creation, he explores the intersection of dance with other artistic practices, the relationship to constraint, effort, and physical commitment, the notion of perspective, image composition, and zoom, as well as a search for boundaries.

Since 2015, Julien has been developing his own choreographic work, progressively expanding its reach internationally. His works include MON/DE (2015), DÉJÀ VU (2016), GOLEM (2019), DRESS CODE (2021), COLLAPSE (2021), TRAJECTOIRES (2022), PAYSAGE (upcoming in 2024).

He has participated twice in training programs at the Royaumont Abbey in Paris: Prototype IV in 2016-17, and OPUS in August 2021. From 2020 to 2022, he has been  associated artist at Charleroi Danse, and will be associated with the Théâtre de Liège between 2024 and 2028. Julien is also supported by the Grand Studio, Bloom Project, and their respective networks.

Julien Carlier has become a regular coach for the Master Dance and Choreographic Practice (Insas, La cambre, Charleroi-danse).