And... to see the colour of the poppies again...

During the confinement, the 15 dancers of the Cie Universitaire DANSE'AMU, directed by Véronique Asencio, did not stop dancing and creating (by video, video, telephone). From this work was born the project "Et... de revoir la couleur des coquelicots" which evolved in the particular context of the prolonged health crisis and is declined in three proposals:

- A short film (#1) - watch it here!(password : DanseAMU2020)
- A choreographic creation presented in public in September 2020 (#2) - Excerpts to be found on video here!
- A choreographic creation filmed and broadcasted online (#3) - watch it here!

The research took place during the confinement on themes deeply linked to the body...
It's about the constrained body, the body of the absent other, the flow, being together but separated...
"This project was born because it wasn't a project... he grew up, fed by about fifteen "I"s...
People,
The game of life...
From the force of envy

Choreographic creation: Véronique Asencio
Director of the film: Denis Alcaniz, Véronique Asencio
Music: Julien Lamy
Special effects: Astrid Manoukian
Interviews: Clarisse Vollon

Notes of intentions of the artistic team

• Véronique Asencio - Artistic Director of the company

At the start, the astonishment!
And very soon the desire to invent...
We can't do what we planned...
Let's take advantage of the unexpected...
And only one idea haunts me: "NO QUESTIONS TO STOP"... being on the move...
Around me EVERYTHING stops, in the world of dance... debates... the norm...
For me, there is no debate here, there is a reality, a context, strong constraints... from all this must be born poetry... our poetry of the moment.
So, yes, there are shortcomings: the absent body, partner, more contact, reduced space... more horizon... our fundamentals mishandled.
But we are in the living of this moment and this link I will keep it, I will feed it and it will result from each of us, the creativity that he did not suspect...
To my fifteen dancers I say to them: " I won't let you go "... because I won't let go of me !

Our appointments have not changed: twice a week.
But a whole organisation has been woven together via the network.
We work on video, in messages and like a ping-pong ball, we go back and forth to work, to exchange, to look for...

Each new theme titillates the curiosity of the dancers and allows me to define and redefine the content, the form... the form and the substance.
It is a question of being confined in the confinement: " glued/unglueed " ;
it's about being together but separated: "face phrase";
it's about "flow", about body states and context...
And, the question of the other one, the partner, absent... his features, his features blurred in the planes of space.
And, at the same time, the search: creativity/groupality...

Time no longer has the same definition... time, availability and almost sometimes overworked to no longer have a schedule...

And the project is born, comes to life, in a totally empirical way according to the events of the world.

There are our appointments, our videos, our music, our voices... Doubts, loneliness, anxiety, but above all the pleasure of movement... DON'T LET GO!
This moment highlights the character traits of each of us... It is often a question of appeasing, of not letting go, of allowing everyone to seize this experience to reveal this little moment of recitation that nestles within us, wedged between the chair and the bed.
This project was born because it wasn't a project... it grew, nourished by fifteen or so "I's", people, the game of life... the force of envy.

Then return from the confinement
"And...to see the color of the poppies #3 again"
Show of the "existing"...
or..,
how Art, by talking about the present moment, also allows us to take distance.

At a time when our life is adapting to the day-to-day, the Company and its creation are becoming polymorphous...

Not long ago new dancers joined the DANSE'AMU Company and a few days later we were again confined.

Just the time to get used to it, so that the research around the "post-confinement" with the question of the body and the relationship at the heart, allows us to create compositions with varied forms.

The important constraints of the moment alter creation in general, and hinder this new chapter in particular, forcing us to speed up invention!

For this 3rd part of the "poppy adventure" we will invest the CUBE.

Indeed, the university deserted by student life will come alive with "dance pieces"; in the hall, on stage, upstairs, in the rehearsal room, in a corner ... From the duo to the quintet we will "unearth" our finds which will be filmed live by our director Denis Alcaniz.

• Denis Alcaniz - Director

This experimental documentary, produced and edited from amateur images shot during the confinement by the dancers of the DANSE'AMU Company, at the request of their choreographer, Véronique Asencio, aims to question our relationship to the body and to confinement, making otherness the common denominator of our production. This work finds its echo through the interviews of these same dancers collected by Clarisse Vollon. We wanted to place the spectator in the position of voyeur/actor. During this confinement, voyeurism probably reached its peak. A large part of us became a real immobile traveller, a digital oxymoron. The western human being stuck in his eternal status of an observant / observed spectator, locked in a digital cave that only too well hid his name.

This film wants to be a true multidisciplinary object that mixes dance, video art, sound art, literature, navigating in the social sciences.

We can consider that this artistic dancing gesture is the very essence of art. While paradoxically some are activated, others are stopped dead in their tracks. The movement is interrupted. The sentence stops. This is about dancing with death.

• Clarisse Vollon - Clinical Psychologist & Lecturer in Clinical Psychopathology at Aix-Marseille University

The major health crisis caused by the COVID-19 epidemic has led to the implementation of major prevention measures, the most emblematic of which is without a doubt the containment of the entire French population announced on 16 March. For two months, this confinement forced each and every one of us to change our daily lives, profoundly reorganizing our intimate, private and public environments. We only wondered about the psychic repercussions of this singular period on our respective internal environments and on the organization of our interpsychic links (Kaës, 2015). During this period, we witnessed many creative initiatives to maintain social ties in various forms, particularly through social networks and the massive use of certain communication platforms such as Zoom. We then asked ourselves several questions: why did the containment measures and, more broadly, the COVID-19 crisis allow creative initiatives to emerge? What have been the impacts of these measures on groups of artists who specifically use movement and space to create, such as dance companies, for example? We believe that creativity (Anzieu, 1981) was, during the period of confinement, the expression of an impulse to interrelate (Avron, 1996) in a social fabric that had been amputated of some of its usual modalities of functioning. More specifically, we will support two hypotheses in our intervention. Firstly, the announcement of measures to confine our population caused a state of creative seizure (Anzieu, 1981) in group organizations that had already been formed. On the other hand, and this is our second hypothesis, the psychological envelope of these groups allowed the emergence and support of group creativity. To test our hypotheses, we propose to analyze observations and interviews conducted with members of the company DANSE'AMU during the creation of their film "and...". to review the colour of the poppies" which took place from March to May 2020.