AVANT-PREMIÈRES

La Raffinerie has always been a place where things are made and a venue for rehearsals.
Every day all our studios are filled with choreographers and dancers undertaking their research. From this season, four projects run by young creators are being supported and given help with promotion, plus a technical residence as the premiere approaches. The residence ends with an invitation to the public and other professionals.
This year’s guest artists are Ikue Nakagawa, Mercedes Dassy, Jonathan Schatz and Pauline Corvellec.

Ikue Nakagawa
Nakami

Ikue Nakagawa, who was born Japan in 1980, embarked on her career dancing for Franck Micheletti, Eun Yong Lee and Pascal Rambert. Owing to her dual culture, that of her home and her adopted country, words and drawing have a very important place in her artistic practice. This stock of knowledge also gives her a heightened awareness of roles and conditions. In Nakami, the young choreographer analyses the mechanisms that create personality and grey areas.

Mercedes Daisy
B4 summer

Born in Brussels in 1990, Mercedes Dassy created i-clit in 2018, a piece that attracted plenty of attention and was viewed as a new feminist manifesto. In B4 summer the choreographer is continuing her research into the relationship between the body and commitment. What effect does activism have on the body ? How does the struggling body express itself ? What can be done to overcome the fatigue and disillusion that are part of being committed ? A new physical and metaphorical exploration of notions of impact, tensions and energy flows.

Jonathan Schatz
MINAKAMI

Formerly a student of the École de l’Opéra National de Paris, Jonathan Schatz met Gisèle Vienne in 2009 on the piece Kindertotenlieder (followed by Crowd
 in 2017), and Catherine Contour in 2011, discovering the tool of Ericksonian Hypnosis with her. After the projects Trans-Niagara and Elephant_Rock, he has now created MINAKAMI, a meeting between his choreographic work and the work Suite by digital artist Yannick Jacquet and composer Thomas Vaquié. Bringing to life an immersive experience around the states of water, hypnosis, contemplation, transformations, they draw a sensory and poetic ode to fluidity.

Pauline Corvellec
Black & Light

A performer from an early age, Pauline Corvellec was involved in particular with Fauves, a piece by Michel Schweizer that took her on a tour of Europe for three years. In 2016, she was selected for the Danse Élargie competition with Black & Light, a project that she is developing today with twelve dancers, actors and circus performers in a long form for all kinds of audiences. Black & Light is a dance of limbs, a poetic constellation of light, a game around images and representations associated with the body.