Olivia GRANDVILLE

Presentation

Olivia Granville’s A L’Ouest took shape during a journey to the heart of the indigenous reserves in Quebec and New Mexico. However, the first idea for this piece was just as musical and sound orientated as it was choreographical. It resounds to this obstinate beat, the same one that fascinated the unclassifiable musician Moondog during an introduction to pow-wow, and which continues today to embody the resistance and spirituality of native peoples.

A L’Ouest  is a dance to a beat that is  both interval and obstinance, the primordial movement of the heart and humanity at work. This unique and hollow blow, light then hard, until the time the spirit comes and jangles the nerves. A l’Ouest is a dance in the here and now, the confirmation of a stubborn verticality, in suspense, that beats the ground when claiming it. Waterfalls, igloos and snowy landscapes are on the menu for this harsh and poetic evocation. The movement plays with pauses and suspensions, nebulous slowdowns and frenetic pulses. Five dancers hit the ground, whirl around, lend themselves to astonishing solos and then enter a hypnotic and wild dance that pulses to the sound of mysterious rhythms.

A l’Ouest is the revenge of time against the event and gives us another perception of time, as intense as life is short.

A message from Brigitte Lefevre

Olivia Grandville is a dancer and choreographer with a unique career, who has been able to risk leaving the Paris Opera to continue a great career. I am very touched by the loyalty she has shown to Dominique Bagouet, in being the origin of the Carnets Bagouet, and in reprising his works, particularly for the Paris Opera. She has become a choreographer of insatiable curiosity, producing erudite pieces full of humour and originality.

The choreographer

Olivia Grandville followed a classical dance education at the Paris Opera and joined the corps de ballet in 1981. Her natural disposition would lead her to performing the modern repertoire (particularly new French dance). In 1988, she decided to devote herself exclusively to modern dance and resigned from the Paris Opera to enter the Compagnie Dominique – Bagouet, where she would be the principle performer for this choreographer’s last creations. From 1993 to date, she has turned definitively towards creation with the company she founded: La Spirale de Caroline.