WORKSHOP THE CHOREOGRAPHIC LANGUAGE OF MAGUY MARIN

Compagnie Maguy Marin

The course of a lifetime – Maguy Marin

There is a birthplace that is more than just a city: Toulouse. A place reached after a series of displacements caused by political events in Spain. It was there that she grew up, in France, in the early 1950s. Her desire to dance was realized through years of study, from Toulouse to Strasbourg and then to Mudra in Brussels. Maurice Béjart, Alfons Goris, and Fernand Schirren... And also many decisive encounters (such as with theater students from the Théâtre National de Strasbourg). Her desire was first affirmed with the Chandra group and then with the Ballet du XXe Siècle. Creation began alongside Daniel Ambash, while the Nyon and Bagnolet competitions (1978) provided further impetus.

Working together

From 1980 to 1990, with the support of the Maison des Arts de Créteil (France), research continued with Christiane Glik, Luna Bloomfield, Mychel Lecoq, and Montserrat Casanova. A company was formed, reinforced by Cathy Polo, Françoise Leick, Ulises Alvarez, and Teresa Cunha, among others. The research continued with one essential constant: the company, which in 1985 became the National Choreographic Center of Créteil and Val-de-Marne. The attempt to work collectively and live off their own work also gained international recognition. In 1987, the meeting with Denis Mariotte led to a long collaboration, opening up a vast field of experimentation based on mutual questioning and the search beyond the limits of a single artistic form.

Do – undo – redo

In 1998, a new context in a new region brought a new choreographic center: the National Choreographic Center in the La Velette neighborhood of Rillieux-la-Pape. There arose the need to reinvest the public space with mixed presences in a shared space: a “we, in time and space.” And in that place, the search to embody the distance necessary to strengthen the ability to react and summon “the diagonal forces that resist oblivion” (H. Arendt).

The work expanded into multiple spaces—in the Studio, in the La Velette neighborhood, in partner cities, and abroad. Multiple creations and interventions were intertwined, while artistic demands opened up possibilities that went beyond the simple desire to be together.

In 2006, a new building was constructed for the CCN in Rillieux-la-Pape: a place to live and coexist, a laboratory for the people, an embodiment of the performing arts, intended for an urban audience from which poetic gestures spring forth. May the part of existence that art brings us be made and expressed publicly, from place to place, from city to city, from country to country; and, to this end, in many different spaces, may we share means, tools, experiences, and actions. Intertwine artistic disciplines, create, support different forms of research, and anchor artistic action in diverse areas of social life: from schools to theaters, from art centers to social centers, from public spaces to places of coexistence, from research spaces to community spaces, allowing the artistic gesture to live as a poetic force capable of creating and recreating worlds.

In 2011, all the modalities involved in the company's research and reflection were rethought. After the intensity of the years at the CCN in Rillieux-la-Pape, the need arose for a new step: to return to working as an independent company. This decision corresponded to the vital desire to experience in other ways everything that the creative act requires, as a potential that extends into the various forms from which it springs.

After three years in Toulouse—a city that briefly welcomed this new phase but was unable to offer the sustainable space that a permanent company requires—the idea arose to settle in Ramdam, a former carpentry workshop acquired in 1995 with copyrights to previous works. Located in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, the space had already been active for 17 years as an association offering artistic residencies, workshops, and public presentations.

The company's definitive installation there in 2015 allowed it to continue to open up the immaterial space of sharing, committed to the work and the development of new projects with other artists: RAMDAM, UN CENTRE D’ART.