Press Release: Award-winning duo Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud return to Sadler's Wells

[Jan McNulty]

UK PREMIERE                                                    
Cecilia Bengolea & François Chaignaud
DFS
Sadler’s Wells, EC1R 4TN
Monday 23 & Tuesday 24 April
Performances: Mon & Tues at 7.30pm
Tickets: £20
Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com

The award-winning duo Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud have collaborated since 2005 and have created works for Lyon Opera Ballet and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. They present work for the first time on the Sadler’s Wells stage, bringing their latest collaboration DFS to London on Monday 23 & Tuesday 24 April. The duo were previously seen in the Lilian Baylis Studio, with Say Yes To Another Excess – TWERK in Spring 2015.

The two artists have been provoking audiences all over the world with their fresh perspective on dance. Their trademark sexually-charged work springs from a wide outlook on what constitutes dance, and a desire to challenge how dance history is written. For DFS they merge the ideologies of Jamican Dancehall and Georgian vocal polyphony.

Bengolea travelled to Jamaica to immerse herself in Kingston’s defiant dance scene. Fascinated by the rhythmic complexity of Jamaican Dancehall, Bengolea explored the musical and choreographic culture born in 1960s Jamaica. Dancehall is a lifestyle that resists power structures and oppressive ideologies. It is an outlet for the violence and competition to which the youngest populations of Kingston’s ghettos are subjected to. What results is a dance that is combative and defiant, technical and rhythmic.

Chaignaud has always been moved by a dream to sing and dance simultaneously. For DFS he pursued the study of traditional Georgian vocal polyphony, focusing especially on the works by medieval French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut. The majority of songs are composed for three voices, creating specific frictions and vibrations. Excited by the immense technical challenges (precision, synchronisation, vocal projection, etc.) Chaignaud aims to create a total mode of expression that is at once musical, vocal, visual, and kinetic.

Bringing their research together, the choreographers invited three ballerinas and dancehall specialists to join them in the exploration of song and dance.

Buenos Aires born Bengolea was trained as a jazz and urban dancer and studied Engenio Barba’s ancestral dances, also called anthropological dances. She studied Philosophy and Art History at Buenos Aires University before moving to Paris to focus on writing, choreography and performing. 

Born in Rennes, Chaignaud graduated from Paris Dance Conservatory and danced with numerous choreographers including Boris Chamartz, Emmanuelle Huynh, Gilles Jobin, Tiago Guedes and Alain Buffard. He has collaborated with San Francisco legendary drag queen Rumi Missabu, performer Benhamin Dukhan and cabaret artist Jérôme Marin. In 2012 he was involved in the creation of Sacre #197 by Dominique Brun. He is also a published historian.

In 2008 Chaignaud and Bengolea co-founded Vlovajob Pru Dance Company and have since created a range of critically acclaimed bold contemporary works.

A Sadler’s Wells co-production

Free post-show talk: Monday 23 April; Alistair Spalding in conversation with Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud



Listing information:

UK PREMIERE
Cecilia Bengolea & François Chaignaud
DFS
Sadler’s Wells, EC1R 4TN
Monday 23 & Tuesday 24 April
Performances: Mon & Tues at 7.30pm
Tickets: £20
Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com

Notes to Editors:

ABOUT SADLER’S WELLS
Sadler’s Wells is a world-leading creative organisation dedicated to dance in all its forms. With over three centuries of theatrical heritage and a year-round programme of performances and learning activities, its goal is to motivate everyone to experience dance – to take part, learn, experiment and be inspired. Audiences of over half a million come to Sadler’s Wells’ London theatres each year, with many more enjoying its touring productions at partner venues across the UK and around the world, or accessing its content through digital channels. 

Sadler’s Wells commissions and presents more new dance work than any other theatre in the world, embracing the popular and the unknown. Since 2005, it has helped to bring over 140 new dance works to the stage, many of them involving its 16 Associate Artists, three Resident Companies and four Associate Companies – the most exciting talents working in dance today. It also nurtures the next generation of talent through its artist development initiatives, and reaches over 25,000 annually through its learning and engagement programmes.

Located in Islington, north London, the current theatre is the sixth to have stood on the site since it was first built by entrepreneur Richard Sadler in 1683. The venue has played an illustrious role in the history of theatre ever since with The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and English National Opera having all started at Sadler’s Wells. Sadler’s Wells is a charity and a National Portfolio Organisation, currently receiving 10% of its revenue from Arts Council England.

www.sadlerswells.com

ABOUT CECILIA BENGOLEA
Born in Buenos-Aires, Cecilia Bengolea studied urban dance forms, before pursuing studies in anthropological dances with Eugenio Barba, as well as Philosophy and Art History at the University of Buenos Aires. In 2001, she moved to Paris and followed the training Ex.e.r.c.e. directed by Mathilde Monnier in Montpellier.

Inspired by the anthropologic work of Levi Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, Cecilia Bengolea co-directed two videos in 2011: La Beauté (tôt) vouée à se défaire with Donatien Veisman and Cri de Pilaga with Juliette Bineau.

As a dancer, choreographer and performance artist, Cecilia Bengolea perceives dance and performance as ‘animated sculpture’ and welcomes the fact that these forms allow her to become both ‘object and subject at the same time’.

In 2016, Bengolea was commissioned by the ICA for London Art Night 2016 to present a video installation into holographic mirrors at Covent Garden Market and perform an outdoor participatory dancehall practice in the historical West Piazza of Covent Garden with ballerina Erika Miyauichi and dancehall artist Damion BG Dancerz.

Bengolea also works with artists Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Monika Gintersdorfer, Knut Klassen as well as Jamaican Dancehall artists such as Joan Mendy and Damion BG dancerz.

In collaboration with Jeremy Deller (UK), she co-directed the film RythmAssPoetry (rap) commissioned by the Biennale de Lyon 2015. Their second film, Bombom’s Dream, shot in Jamaica in 2016, commissioned by Hayward Gallery London and Sao Paulo Biennial 2016.

Bengolea is currently working on a new piece in collaboration with Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger, inspired by combat sports, animal and insects and animist dancing, to be premiered in April 2018.

ABOUT FRANÇOIS CHAIGNAUD
Born in Rennes, François Chaignaud studied dance from the age of six. He earned a diploma in 2003 from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Danse de Paris, collaborating soon after with several choreographers, notably Boris Charmatz, Emmanuelle Huynh, Alain Buffard, and Gilles Jobin.

From He’s One that Goes to Sea for Nothing but to Make him sick (2004) to Думи мої – Dumy Moyi (2013), he has created performances in which dance and singing intersect, in a wide variety of environments and at the meeting points of many inspirations. From this tension, the possibility of a body takes shape, inhabiting the space between the sensual rigour of movement, the evocative power of singing, and the convergence of heterogeneous historical references – from erotic literature (Aussi Bien Que Ton Cœur Ouvre Moi Les Genoux, 2008) to sacred art.

Also a historian, François Chaignaud published L’Affaire Berger-Levrault: le féminisme à l’épreuve (1898-1905) with PUR. His curiosity for history has driven him to initiate various collaborations, notably with legendary drag queen Rumi Missabu of the Cockettes, cabaret performer Jérôme Marin (Sous l’ombrelle, 2011), artist Marie Caroline Hominal (Duchesses, 2009), fashion designers Romain Brau (Думи мої – Dumy Moyi, 2013) and Charlie Le Mindu, visual artist Theo Mercier (Radio Vinci Park, 2016), photographer Donatien Veismann and videast Cesar Vayssié. Chaignaud has been commissioned to create a film installation for 24 FRAMES per second in CarriageWorks Sydney. He is currently doing research on polyphonies Georgian, pre-Christian and medieval.

In collaboration with artist Nino Laisné, he has created a new piece entitled Romances Inciertos: Un autre Orlando, bringing together four musician to create work around the vocal repertoire from the Iberian Peninsula. Chaignaud is currently researching the Antique Christian song repertoire as well as Hildegard Von Bingen pieces in collaboration with Marie-Pierre Brébant. He is also creating a piece for the Carte Blanche Ballet (Norway) in collaboration with Romain Brau, to be premiered in May 2018.

CECILIA BENGOLEA AND FRANÇOIS CHAIGNAUD 
Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud have collaborate since 2005. 

They created Pâquerette (2005-2008), Sylphides (2009), Castor et Pollux (2010), Danses Libres (based on choreographies from François Malkovsky et Suzanne Bodak, 2010), (M)IMOSA (with Trajal Harrell and Marlene Monteiro Freitas, 2011), altered natives’ Say Yes To Another Excess – TWERK(2012),  Dub Love (2013), DFS (2016). Sylphides won the Award de la Critique de Paris in 2009 and the Young Artist Prize at Gwangju Biennial, Korea in 2014.

They created How Slow The Wind (2014) for Opera de Lyon, a piece for seven dancers on point shoes. The following year, the Ballet de Lorraine also commissioned them to created Devoted (2015), a piece for nine female dancers on pointe shoes to Philip Glass’s Another look on Harmony. In 2015, they premiered The Lighters’ Dancehall Polyphony, a polyphonic ballet for Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal.

Over the past few years, they have presented work at Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Kitchen, New York; Tokyo’s Spiral in Japan; the Biennale de la danse de Lyon; Sadler’s Wells Lilian Baylis Studio, London; Faena Art Center, Buenos Aires; of fig-2 at ICA, London ; Festival d’Avignon; Festival d’Automne à Paris;  Montpellier Danse; ImpulsTanz, Vienna; deSingel, Antwerp; Teatro de la Ribera, Buenos Aires; Panorama Festival, Rio de Janeiro; Centre National de la Danse, Pantin; SESC, Sao Paulo. 

Bengolea and Chaignaud present an exhibition of old and new dances as well as video and performance works for Dia Art Centre Beacon and Chelsea for 2017 and 2018. 

Their company Vlovajob Pru is subsidised by the ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) and the Conseil Régional Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Vlovajob Pru receives the support of the French Institute and of the French Institute / City of Lyon for its projects abroad.

François Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea are associate artists at Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy