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Frédéric Pierrot discovered the world of entertainment in the United States when he was in his twenties. He developed an interest in music, poetry as well as literature… Upon his return to France, he decided to study drama while working as a machinist. His career was then marked by various encounters at his arrival in Paris ; his work on the other side of the camera, his curiosity about the work of acting – first with the intention of directing himself – and his participation in Christian de Tillière’s workshop. A demanding and passionate performer, he has been sought, thanks to his subtle acting mixing determination and fragility, by prestigious directors like Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Luc Godard, Bertrand Blier, Agnès Jaoui, François Ozon, Roschy Zem, Gilles Bourdos, Maïwenn, Antoine de Caunes, as well as Ken Loach, who casted him for Land and Freedom. As far as theatre is concerned, he performed in 2005 in Botho Strauss’ Big and Little, directed by Philippe Calvario, then he played the part of Mikkel Borgen junior in Ordet, by Kaj Munk, for 2 years at the Cloître des Carmes in Avignon, then on tour, and finally at the Théâtre du Rond-Point, directed by Arthur Nauzyciel. In 2017, he was back on stage in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, directed by Simon Stone. The show was created at the Odéon Theatre, and was then performed at the Villeurbanne TNP, in Anvers, Turin and Angers.
Opening Night
THEATER
US Premiere
Thu–Sat, Sep 12–14
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
Morgan Lloyd Sicard is a Franco-British citizen in his early thirties. He started studying drama in 2009 at the University Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle and graduated from the Montpellier National Drama Academy (ENSAD) in 2014. He has since been seen in various theatre and TV shows. On stage, he has worked under the direction of Georges Lavaudant, Evelyne Didi, André Wilms, Cyril Teste, Guillaume Vincent, Sandrine Hutinet, Olivier Werner, Jacques Allaire, among others. Meanwhile, he has been a regular guest at the Institute of language research and culture, taking part, in English, in international conferences on the work of Shakespeare. He founded in 2014, with other members of his promotion at the drama academy, the collective of performers/creators La Carte Blanche, through which he met Cyril Teste and his Collectif MxM for the creation of the show Nobody.
Opening Night
THEATER
US Premiere
Thu–Sat, Sep 12–14
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
Born in Paris in 1962 and based in New York, Pierre Huyghe works on situations that are often based on speculative models. The environments he creates are complex systems in which interdependent agents, biotic and abiotic, real and symbolic, are self-organizing, co-evolving in a dynamic and unstable mesh. Selected solo exhibitions include UUmwelt at the Serpentine Galleries (London, 2018), Orphan Patterns at the Sprengel Museum (Hanover, Germany, 2016), The Roof Garden Commission: Pierre Huyghe, at Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, 2015), and Pierre Huyghe at Ludwig Museum (Cologne, Germany, 2014) and Los Angeles County Museum (2014). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions including After Alife Ahead at Skulptur Projekte Münster (Germany, 2017), Tino Sehgal at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2016), Saltwater: A Theory of Thought Forms at the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015). In 2017, Huyghe was awarded the Nasher Prize for Sculpture. He was also the recipient of the Kurt Schwitters Prize at the Sprengel Museum (2015), Roswitha Haftmann Prize in Zurich (2013), the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Contemporary Artist Award (2010), the Hugo Boss Prize (2002), the Special Jury Prize awarded by 49th Venice Biennale (2001), and received the DAAD Artist in Residence grant in Berlin (1999–2000).
The Host and the Cloud
Pierre Huyghe
VIDEO
Thu, Sep 12–Sat, Oct 12
Mon–Fri: 8:30am–9:30pm
Sat: 8:30am–5pm
Opening Reception
Thu, Sep 12 at 6pm
FIAF Gallery
Rhys Chatham is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Manhattan, currently living in Paris, who fused avant-garde minimalism with the electric crunch of punk rock. Chatham's instrumentation ranges from the seminal composition composed in 1977 entitled Guitar Trio for 3 electric guitars, electric bass, and drums, to the epoch evening-length work for 100 electric guitars, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See, composed in 1989. Chatham's composition for 200 electric guitars, A Crimson Grail, was last performed in the Town Hall in Birmingham, UK in 2014. A new piece for 100 electric guitars, A Secret Rose, premiered at the Sydney Festival in 2018. Chatham is currently touring as a solo performer, playing versions of his recently released LP, A Pythagorean Dream, from Foom Records.
The Sun Too Close to the Earth
Rhys Chatham
MUSIC
World Premiere
Fri, Oct 4 & Sat, Oct 5
ISSUE Project Room
French-German, director, actor, performer, and translator, Mikaël Serre trained at the Beaux-Arts de Saint-Étienne before beginning his career as a photographer and graphic designer. He trained in Russia as a director before joining the Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. In 2000, he performed in Italy and Germany in the creation Il Regno, then in Summerfolk by M. Gorki. He founded the company Theâtre Bathyscaphe and continued his acting career at the Stadttheater in Bremen. As an artist associated with the Ferme du Buisson and then at La Rose des Vents, he made his first productions by choosing texts by contemporary authors or a set script. Transcending borders, his work has developed internationally thanks to cross-fertilization with various partners and artistic collaborators around the world, including in France, Germany, Switzerland, Senegal, and Italy. His directorial work has been featured at venues such as the Theatre National de Chaillot, Théâtre de la Bastille, and Opéra de Dijon, and he has been invited to numerous festivals including the Theater Pina Bauch, FIND Festival at Berlin's Schaubühne, and the famous Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. Recent works include SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING (2015) with Germaine Acogny; Song of Solomon (2016), The Tales of Hoffmann (2017), Trois Ombres (2018), La Bohème (2019), and coming up in 2020, The Robbers by F. Schiller and a new creation, Offenbach Report, at the National Opera Nancy.
SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING
Germaine Acogny & Mikaël Serre
DANCE THEATER
US Premiere
Thu–Sat, Sep 26–28
La MaMa
Artistic director, screenwriter, and director, Amélie Bonnin works at the intersection of many disciplines including writing, animation, and drawing. For four years, she did live drawing of the guests at France Culture’s L’Atelier intérieur, as well as the rehearsals of the play Actrice at the Bouffes du Nord. She directed La mélodie du boucher (Arte, 2013) a 52-minute documentary about her uncle, a small village butcher and charcutier on the verge of retirement; and she co-directed with Aurélie Charon La bande des Français (France 3, 2017). Bonnin attended the Atelier Scénario de la Fémis. She is working on her first short fiction film.
Radio Live
Aurélie Charon, Caroline Gillet, and Amélie Bonnin
RADIO PERFORMANCE
NY Premiere
Wed, Oct 2
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
Caroline Gillet is a journalist and producer for Radio France. Born in 1984, she studied contemporary history in Brussels and journalism at Sciences Po, Paris. Her work involves the questions of communication between generations and cultures. For France Inter, she created I Like Europe, chronicling the words of a generation from Porto to Riga. In 2014, she launched Tea Time Club, followed by a series of portraits called À ton âge. Since 2017, she has presented the chronicle Babelophone on France Inter, featuring interviews of youth from around the world every Saturday night. She has collaborated on the podcast Transfert from Slate. She currently presents Foule Continentale, also documenting the lives of young Europeans, every Sunday on France Inter.
Radio Live
Aurélie Charon, Caroline Gillet, and Amélie Bonnin
RADIO PERFORMANCE
NY Premiere
Wed, Oct 2
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
Catherine Gallant has been dancing, choreographing, and teaching for more than 30 years, in both traditional and alternative venues. Gallant has received funding for her work from the Harkness Foundation for Dance, LMCC/Creative Engagement, the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Trust, City Parks Foundation, Jody and John Arnhold, and NYFA. She has taught college dance courses at Boston Conservatory, Curry College, and MIT. She has been creating new works as Catherine Gallant/DANCE since 1999. Catherine is also the director and co-founder (with Patricia Adams in 1989) of Dances by Isadora, which performs, teaches, and collaborates with Duncan dancers throughout the world. She began her study of the technique of Isadora Duncan with Julia Levien, a student of Anna and Irma Duncan, in 1982. She is currently on the Duncan Archive Committee and is a regular contributor to duncanarchive.org. Catherine is currently a fulltime dance educator at PS 89 in Lower Manhattan. She and her students were featured in the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary, PS DANCE! She was on the writing committee for NYC Blueprint for the Arts in dance and is on the faculty of the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL). Ms. Gallant is a graduate of Boston Conservatory and holds an MFA in dance from Temple University.
Isadora Duncan
Jérôme Bel
DANCE
US Premiere
Wed, Sep 25
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
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 and has worked with choreographers, such as Boris Charmatz and Emmanuelle Huynh. In his performances, dance and singing intersect in a wide variety of environments and at the meeting points of many inspirations. Also a historian, Chaignaud has published L’Affaire Berger-Levrault: le féminisme à l’épreuve (1898–1905). He collaborated with legendary drag queen Rumi Missabu of the Cockettes, cabaret performer Jérôme Marin (Sous l’ombrelle, 2011), artist Marie-Caroline Hominal (Duchesses, 2009), visual artist Théo Mercier (Radio Vinci Park, 2016), photographer Donatien Veismann, and artist César Vayssié. His piece Romances inciertos: un autre Orlando, created with artist Nino Laisné, was presented at the 2018 Festival d’Avignon. His research into Christian song repertoire as well as Hildegard von Bingen pieces came to fruition with the premiere of Symphonia Harmoniæ Cælesitum Revelationum, in May 2019 at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels. Along with his close collaborator Cecilia Bengolea, Chaignaud is an associate artist at Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy.
Дyми Moï – Dumy Moyi
François Chaignaud
PERFORMANCE
US Premiere
Fri, Oct 11 & Sat, Oct 12
The Invisible Dog Art Center
Stefanie Batten Bland is a Jerome Robbins Award winner whose interdisciplinary creative practice is embedded in human relationships. She interrogates the preconceived notions embedded within contemporary and historical culture, and situates her work at the intersection of installation and dance-theatre in live performance settings. Based in New York since 2011, Company SBB was founded in France in 2008, while Batten Bland was head choreographer at the Opéra Comique in Paris. The company is in permanent residence at University Settlement in Manhattan's Lower East Side and is regularly produced by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club of New York City. Batten Bland has received commissions from Mona Bismarck American Center in Paris, Ailey II, Spoleto Festival (Italy), The Yard, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Singapore Frontier Danceland, TU Dance, Zenon Dance Company, Harlem Stage, Brooklyn Museum, and venues throughout Europe and Asia. She has created 12 dance cinema films. Recent credits include movement director for Eve’s Song at The Public Theater and choreographer for American Ballet Theater’s Women’s Movement Initiative (2019–2021). She is a 2019 fellow at New York University’s Center for the Ballet Arts. Batten Bland has been featured in The New York Times, Dance magazine, Dance Europe, and Marie Claire. In July 2019, she will complete her MFA in interdisciplinary arts with concentration in performance creation at Goddard College. Currently, Batten Bland is completing a dance-theater guidebook manuscript and lives in SoHo with her family.
Look Who's Coming to Dinner
Stefanie Batten Bland
DANCE
World Premiere
Thu–Sun, Oct 2–6
La MaMa
Olivier Tarpaga is a Lester Horton Award–winning dancer-choreographer and musician, a dance guest lecturer at the Lewis Center for the Arts, and a music lecturer and the director of the African music ensemble for Princeton University’s Department of Music. Tarpaga’s major works includes When Birds Refused to Fly (2019), Declassified Memory Fragment (2015), Not Because You’re African (2010), Disorder Inside Order (2008), Sira Kan (2007) with Esther Baker-Tarpaga and Wilfried Souly, Duna (2006) with Lacina Coulibaly, and Tin Suka (2001) with Companie Ta. Tarpaga is the founder and artistic director of Dafra Drum and Dafra Kura Band, and co-founder of the Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project. He danced with David Rousseve/REALITY from 2006 to 2010, when he was also a State Department Art Envoy in South Africa, Botswana, Burkina Faso, and Sri Lanka. He has been commissioned by Malaysia’s HANDS percussion, MAYA dance theater of Singapore, and the Temple of Fine Arts in Perth, Austrailia. Tarpaga has performed and recorded with celebrity rock star POE at Capitol Records in Hollywood. In 2008, he was invited to re-interpret Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with West African instruments for a sold-out concert with Billy Bragg in Santa Monica. Tarpaga is the artistic director of the Nomad Express International Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and has performed and taught dance and music in 50 countries throughout Africa, Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.
When Birds Refused to Fly
Olivier Tarpaga
DANCE
NY Premiere
Thu, Oct 10
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
Aurélie Charon (b. 1985) has spent seven years directing a radio documentary series on youth, the first three with Caroline Gillet. Over the past years, she has continued to conduct research around activism in undemocratic places: Underground Democracy (France Inter in Tehran, Gaza, Moscow, and Algeria, 2014). She has followed the work of French youth through the radio programs Une série française (France Inter, 2015) and Jeunesse 2016 (France Culture, 2016), as well as the film La Bande des Français(France 2, 2017), directed with Amélie Bonnin. She regularly collaborates with Libération. For the past seven years, she has presented the hour-long France Culture radio program Une vie d’artiste, about contemporary creation featuring in-studio performances.
Radio Live
Aurélie Charon, Caroline Gillet, and Amélie Bonnin
RADIO PERFORMANCE
NY Premiere
Wed, Oct 2
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
Senegalese and French, Germaine Acogny has developed her own Modern African Dance technique and is widely considered the Mother of Contemporary African Dance. For more than five decades she has been an emissary of African dance and culture, performing, choreographing, and teaching all over the world, From 1977 to 1982, she was artistic director of Mudra Afrique, created by Maurice Béjart and the Senegalese President L.S. Senghor in Dakar. In 1997, Acogny was appointed artistic director of the Dance of Africa in Creation section in Paris. With her husband Helmut Vogt, she founded in 1996 the Ecole des Sables, the International Centre for Traditional and Contemporary Dances of Africa, based in Senegal. She has received two Bessie Awards: Japanese choreographer Kota Yamazaki and Acogny won for their joint creation Fagaala, and in 2018 she was recognized for the performance of her solo Mon élue noire-sacre #2. Acogny is a Knight of the Ordre du Mérite, Officer and Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and Officer of the Ordre de la Légion d'Honneur of the French Republic. She is also a Knight of the National Order of the Lion and Officer and Commander of Arts and Letters of the Senegalese Republic.
SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING
Germaine Acogny & Mikaël Serre
DANCE THEATER
US Premiere
Thu–Sat, Sep 26–28
La MaMa
Jérôme Bel was born in 1964, lives in Paris. In his early pieces, Jérôme Bel applied structuralist operations to dance in order to single out the primary elements from theatrical spectacle. His interest subsequently shifted from dance as a stage practice to the issue of the performer as a particular individual. The series of portraits of dancers (Véronique Doisneau, Cédric Andrieux, Pichet Klunchun and myself…) broaches dance through the narrative of those who practice it, emphasizes words in a dance spectacle, and stresses the issue of the singularity of the stage. Through his use of biography, Jérôme Bel politicizes his questions, aware as he is of the crisis involving the subject in contemporary society and the forms its representation takes on stage. In The show must go on, which was awarded a Bessie in 2005 and Disabled Theater, he started dealing with questions about what the theatre can be in a political sense. In offering the stage to non-traditional performers (amateurs, people with physical and mental handicaps, children in Gala), he shows a preference for the community of differences over the formatted group, and a desire to dance over choreography, and duly applies the methods of a process of emancipation through art. In 2016, he created MoMA Dance Company, performed by some of its staff members and he has also been invited to contemporary art biennials and museums, where he has put on performances and shown films.
Isadora Duncan
Jérôme Bel
DANCE
US Premiere
Wed, Sep 25
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
Writer and director Marie-Hélène Estienne first worked with Peter Brook in casting the 1974 production of Timon of Athens at the Bouffes du Nords. She subsequently joined the Centre International de Créations Théâtrales (CICT) for the creation of Ubu aux Bouffes (1977). She was Brook’s assistant on La tragédie de Carmen, Le Mahabharata, and collaborated on the stagings of The Tempest, Impressions de Pelléas, Woza Albert !, and La tragédie d’Hamlet. With Brook, she co-authored L’homme qui and Je suis un phénomène at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. She wrote the French adaptation of Can Themba’s play Le costume and Sizwe Bansi est mort by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. In 2003 she wrote the French and English adaptations of Le Grand Inquisiteur (The Grand Inquisitor) based on Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. She authored Tierno Bokar (2005) and the English adaptation of Eleven and Twelve by Amadou Hampaté Ba (2009). With Brook, she co-directed Fragments, five short pieces by Beckett, and adapted Mozart and Schikaneder’s Die Zauberflöte for the acclaimed Une flûte enchantée. She a co-creator of The Suit (2012) and The Valley of Astonishment (2013).
Why?
Peter Brook & Marie-Hélène Estienne
THEATER
US Premiere
Sat-Sun, Sep 21-22
Tue-Sun, Sep 24-29
Tue-Sun, Oct 1-6
Theatre for a New Audience
Throughout his career, Peter Brook (b. 1925, London) has distinguished himself in theater, opera, cinema, and writing. He directed his first play in London in 1943 and has since directed more than 70 productions in London, Paris, and New York. His work with the Royal Shakespeare Company includes Love’s Labour’s Lost (1946), Measure for Measure (1950), Titus Andronicus (1955), King Lear (1962), Marat/Sade (1964), US (1966), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970), and Antony and Cleopatra (1978). In 1971, he founded with Micheline Rozan the International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris and opened its permanent base in the Bouffes du Nord Theatre in 1974, where he has enjoyed great success, most recently directing The Suit (2012), The Valley of Astonishment (2014) and Battlefield (2015)—many of these in both French and English. He has directed operas at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Bouffes du Nord, and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Brook’s autobiography, Threads of Time, was published in 1998 and joins his other titles including The Empty Space (1968), The Shifting Point (1987), There are no Secrets (1993), Evoking (and Forgetting) Shakespeare (1999), and The Quality of Mercy (2014). His films include Moderato Cantabile (1959), Lord of the Flies (1963), Marat/Sade (1967), Tell me Lies (1967), King Lear (1969), Meetings with Remarkable Men (1976), The Mahabharata (1989), and The Tragedy of Hamlet (2002, TV).
Why?
Peter Brook & Marie-Hélène Estienne
THEATER
US Premiere
Sat-Sun, Sep 21-22
Tue-Sun, Sep 24-29
Tue-Sun, Oct 1-6
Theatre for a New Audience
After studying aesthetics at the Sorbonne, Fanny de Chaillé worked with Daniel Larrieu at the Centre choréorgraphique national in Tours, France. There she collaborated with Rachid Ouramdane and worked under the direction of Gwenaël Morin. She also participated in projects by the artists Thomas Hirschhorn and Pierre Huyghe. Since 1995, she has presented both installations and performances, including Karaokurt (1996), La Pierre de causette (1997), Le Robert (2000), Le Voyage d’hiver (2001), and Wake up (2003). Beginning in 2003, she developed works for the theater including Underwear, pour une politique du défilé (2003); Ta ta ta (2005); AMÉRIQUE (2006); Gonzo Conférence, and À nous deux (2007). With Grégoire Monsaingeon, she founded the musical duo “Les velourses” and together they presented Mmeellooddyy Nneellssoonn at the Théâtre de la Cité in Paris. In 2013, she created the project La Clairière for the Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou. Her most recent work includes Le Groupe (2014), based on the writings of Hugo von Hoffmannsthal; Chut (2015), an homage to Buster Keaton; and expanding her collaboration Pierre Alferi with Les Grands (2017).
The Disorder of Discourse
THEATER
US Premiere
Tue, Sep 17 & Wed, Sep 18
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
600 HIGHWAYMEN, under the direction of Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone, makes performances that offer a new way of seeing for today. They explore a radical approach to making live art, constructing events that create intimacy among a group of strangers. Developed using creative methods ranging from the mainstream to the peculiar, their work is a rigorously tuned investigation of presence and humanity, not only in performance, but in process and aftermath. Since 2009 their performances have included The Fever, Employee of the Year, The Record, This Great Country, Everyone Was Chanting Your Name, Empire City, and This Time Tomorrow. 600 HWM received an Obie Award in 2014, Zurich’s ZKB Patronage Prize in 2015, and a Bessie Nomination for Outstanding Production of 2015. In 2016, Browde and Silverstone were named artist fellows by the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Manmade Earth
600 HIGHWAYMEN
PERFORMANCE
World Premiere
Fri, Sep 13–Sun, Sep 15
The Invisible Dog Art Center
Isabelle Yasmine Adjani is one of France’s greatest actresses and enjoys international recognition. Born in Paris to an Algerian father and a German mother, she started performing at an early age. At 17, she was asked to join the Comédie Française—making her the youngest actress ever to attend the prestigious institution. Adjani is the only French actress who has been awarded five Césars (France’s version of the Oscars), winning best actress for her performances in Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981), One Deadly Summer (Jean Becker, 1983), Camille Claudel (Bruno Nuytten, 1988), Queen Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994), La journée de la jupe (Jean-Paul Lilienfeld, 2009). She received two Oscar nominations for her performances in The story of Adele H. (François Truffaut, 1975) and Camille Claudel, and has won two best actress awards at the Cannes Film Festival for her remarkable performances in Possession and Quartet (James Ivory, 1981). Her most recent movie, The world is yours (Romain Gavras, 2018), was shown as part of the Directors’ Fortnight 2018 in Cannes. Adjani is a brand ambassador for L’Oréal Monde.
Opening Night
THEATER
US Premiere
Thu–Sat, Sep 12–14
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
Cyril Teste first developed an interest in visual arts before turning to theater and attending the Cannes Regional School of Acting, then the Paris National Drama Academy. He co-founded Collectif MxM, a creative and changeable core of artists and technicians, with light designer Julien Boizard and composer Nihil Bordures in 2000, eventually becoming its artistic director. As a director, he has worked with authors focused on the concept of immediacy, whose works break theatrical codes and give way to images, including Patrick Bouvet and Falk Richter, who had a decisive influence on his work. Since 2011, Teste and Collectif MxM have been working on the concept of filmic performance (shooting, editing, calibrating, and mixing in real time, before the very eyes of the audience). Teste has produced three such works: Patio (2011), based on On n’est pas là pour disparaître by Olivia Rosenthal; Park (2012); and Nobody (2015).
Opening Night
THEATER
US Premiere
Thu–Sat, Sep 12–14
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
