Workshops

The story behind “Enter the faun”

Tamar Rogoff wanted to create a new version of Vaslav Nijinsky’s landmark piece, “L’Après-midi d’un faune”, created by Diaghilev’s famous Russian Ballet (1912). She chose to work with the young actor Gregg Mozgala, who had cerebral palsy, to interpret the faun. Rogoff adapted her creative and teaching techniques to Mozgala’s physical condition, and he agreed to submit his body and mind to her choreographer’s designs. Thus, together they reinvented their practice and their own existence.

Dir : Tamar Rogoff, Daisy Wright | USA | 2015 | 68′

Workshops

New York-based choreographer Tamar Rogoff visited Québec City and Montréal in May 2018 to offer a series of workshops for dance professionals and people with motor disorders.

Tamar Rogoff laid out a program of exercises through which participants experienced a new approach to managing their motor skills. Like Mr. Mozgala who learned to break motor habits caused by cerebral palsy, participants were led to discover parts of their bodies over which they previously had little control and which can be sources of motor rehabilitation.

A screening of the documentary “Enter the Faun” preceded each workshop and was followed by a period of discussion between the participants and Tamar Rogoff and Sylvain Bleau.

Upon discovering the fascinating story of this artist duo, Cinédanse’s director, Sylvain Bleau, sought every opportunity to invite them to the country, not only to share their story, but more importantly, to serve as an inspiration to the artists and other people with the disease, their families and caregivers.

On August 12, 2017, French choreographer Thierry Thieû Niang resumed his tour of Québec and Ottawa to bring “Dancing Spring in Summer! ” to our seniors and youth.

After his remarkable performance at Place des Arts in Montréal in May 2017, Thierry Thieû Niang was back in shape, and took to the road again in Québec (Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Paspébiac, Rouyn-Noranda) passing by Ottawa, from August 12 until September 3, 2017, to the great pleasure of the hundred of participants and Cinédanse partners.

A unique opportunity was offered for youth and elders to work with a recognized artist to give another tone to dance.

In each community visited, the powerful documentary film “Dancing Spring in Autumn” featuring the choreographer and a group of seniors from Marseille was screened. This film, charged with humanity, was the inspiration for Cinédanse’s producer, Sylvain Bleau, to imagine this tour which brings together young people and seniors and questions our relationship to old age, to the ties that need to be rebuilt between these two generations, which are often too far apart in our modern societies. At the end of each projection, there were citizen exchanges between the choreographer and the public. And guests with notably in Montréal were present: the Innu poetess Josephine Bacon, the pioneer of dance in Québec Martine Époque, the historian Hélène-Andrée Vizier, Dr. Valérie Lemieux from the Montréal Public Health Department and the animator Sébastien Diaz.

Dir :  Philippe Chevallier, Denis Sneguirev | 2013 | 52’

Israeli choreographer Mor Shani was inspired by Erich Fromm’s book “Art of Loving” (1956) to create Love-ism, a work that seeks to understand the different forms of love that unite human beings.

He continues the creative process in the form of workshops with non-dancers. Shani, who wants to take dance out of the studios and make it accessible to everyone.

Two free workshops for the public were offered by Cinédanse Québec 2015.

15 people attended Mor Shani’s workshops in Québec City. Luminous footage filmed by Sixta with the workshop participants were integrated into the film presented to the Québec City audience.

Dir : Paul Sixta | Chor :  Mor Shani | 2013

This workshop was organized by Cinédanse Québec 2014, in collaboration with L’Artère, la Rotonde, the Regroupement québécois de la danse and Studio 303.

Biography
Based between Edinburgh and Barcelona, filmmaker and choreographer Isabel Rocamora is now recognized as one of the most inspiring dance filmmakers in the world. Her films deal with delicate and topical subjects with honesty and remarkable acuity.

Presentation of the workshop
The relationship between the moving body, time, space and the camera is rich and complex. During the two-day intensive workshop, Isabel Rocamora proposed to the participating artists (performers, choreographers or filmmakers) a series of practical exercises on the dialogue between the moving body and the camera.

The workshop was structured around exercises on the following topics :

• observation techniques;
• the sequence shot versus editing (in relation to time and space);
• how to capture the three-dimensionality of action in motion;
• the dialogue between the moving body and the moving camera;
• the basic rules of shooting necessary for editing (the language of cinema);
• how to stay faithful to the qualities of movement when shooting (keeping rhythm and change in perspective);
• the integration of theme with choreography and the cinematic gaze (collaborative methods).

Throughout the workshop, the performers and filmmakers worked in groups and were asked to contribute to the exercises through their own disciplinary perception, in order to enrich the work of their colleagues. The particularity of this workshop is that it allowed each of them to capture the specific nature of the other’s creativity by switching roles.

Thus, performers and choreographers were invited to choreograph film sequences, while directors were given the opportunity to dance to deepen their understanding of the body in movement. This collaborative process was at the heart of the learning process.

In her film “Horizon of Exile” (2007), Isabel Rocamora takes us through the difficult desert crossing of two women whose inner movement invades us, confuses us. In “Promise of a Fallen Time” (2009), she captures the end of a couple’s life, a film produced long before Michael Haneke’s “Amour”. “Body of War” (2011) takes a tender look at the soldiers of our contemporary wars. These three films were presented at the 2015 Cinédanse Festival in Québec City.