^{(c) Marian Adreani}

Johanna Faye

When conventional language falls short, the body, inhabited by the senses, becomes a vehicle for stories and dialog-building between the protagonists. Finding a middle ground through movement is among the objectives central to Johanna Faye’s creative gesture. The resulting conversation stems from the choreographer’s multiple sources of inspiration, where the importance of the relationship to the dance floor, rooted in her practice as a b-girl, is coupled with verticality and a sensory approach to contemporary dance.

Johanna Faye strives to rehabilitate this non-verbal language as a need to draw our attention back to our instinctive sense of self. Starting with Iskio (2015), her first choreographic attempt written and performed as a duo with Saïdo Lehlouh, Johanna explores a one-on-one relationship, where otherness becomes a foothold for the individual. Moving from a duo to a group, the two members of the Black Sheep dance company take it to the next level in Fact (2017), a piece for seven performers in which both the human and material environments prompt the dancers to reshape their mutual interactions in motion.

Lastly, Johanna Faye finds a narrative balance to her inaugural independent piece in the magic number represented by the trio. Meaning literally “far within” or “away from” in Portuguese, Afastado Em (2018) traces the intertwining paths of three female dancers, each representing a divergent practice: flamenco, Krumping, and contemporary dance. In a decelerating tug-of-war, the piece figures an introspective insight into the characters through an external gesture, such as the act of contemplative breathing in tandem.

Together, Johanna Faye and Saïdo Lehlouh created Earthbound (2021), a celebration through dance of the rebel and underground hip hop scene’s diversity which questions the stage’s performative codes. Emerging from her encounter with clarinetist Guillaume Humery, jazz pianist Léo Jassef and dancer-jiujitsuka Julien Fouché, Inner (2022) is a shared introspection where body and music echo each other spontaneously.

Saïdo Lehlouh

In the mid-90s, the style produced by the Parisian b-boying scene stunned the world with a new vision of breakdance. Wild Cat, Saïdo Lehlouh’s first choreographic attempt, created in 2018, foregrounds this style distinguished by its fluidity and its truly feline refinement. The dancer and choreographer’s stint as a breaker with the Bad Trip Crew informs the sincerity of his gesture which tends toward introspection and submission to gravity while lending explosive force to his performance within the circle.

Having cut his teeth on street dance, the choreographer offers an alternative sequel to his début show with his 2019 composition, Apaches. Saïdo Lehlouh makes use of the authenticity afforded by improvisation in a versatile stage piece that perpetually adapts to the context of each performance. Whether in a public space or on stage, Apaches arranges bodies and sets them to rhythm in a transitional space where the circulating energies and sincere intentionality are the message.

By taming the floor through touch, “Darwin” continuously builds a corporal vocabulary responsive to the needs of the moment. With his partner Johanna Faye, the other member of the Black Sheep dance company, Saïdo Lehlouh explores in Iskio (2015), and later in Fact (2017), the possibilities of speaking out in a choreographic dialog. Together, Saïdo Lehlouh and Johanna Faye created Earthbound (2021), a celebration through dance of the rebel and underground hip hop scene’s diversity which questions the stage’s performative codes.

^{(c) Marian Adreani}

^{(c) Yann Peucat Puzzle}

Collectif FAIR-E // CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne

Bouside Ait Atmane, Iffra Dia, Johanna Faye, Céline Gallet, Linda Hayford, Saïdo Lehlouh, Marion Poupinet, Ousmane Sy 

With a background in hiphop and all its influences, we represent a new generation of choreographers. Our driving force—dance, as well as art brut—draws on self-taught skills and takes on a universal dimension that informs our values. It is dance that allows us to forge a cross-disciplinary dialog with other aesthetics and to be in touch with reality. We affirm the use of making (faire) as a way of relating to the world, as well as a method of appropriating, through action and reaction, our immediate environment and of infusing it, whenever possible, with desire, poetry, justice, imagination, joy, sharing, and community…

Gathered together, enriched by our differences and by our individual artistic approaches, we have been able to sweep aside the residual modalities of writing specific to our respective fields of aesthetics. We thus invite you to discover our worlds and partake in the auteur dance that fits perfectly within the panorama of contemporary dance.