© Estelle Chaigne
LE BAL DES ARDENTES
LE BAL DES ARDENTES is a therapeutic and resistant dancefloor born from the past collaborations between artist Johanna Rocard and DJ Amandine Braud. After three years of collecting empowering music tracks during the project BRAVES, dancefloor for times of crisis, they now present a hybrid format, where floor dances combine with somatic practices, vernacular dances, and the empowering power of music, offering a space-time for collective and alternative healing.
In the tradition of cathartic dancers, performers and willing amateurs lead the ball, guiding participants in a timeless festive ritual. A wardrobe of adornments/armor is provided and behind horned caps, pearl masks, fringed coats, fake buttocks and hoods, the figures of charivaris, popular trances, upheavals and revolts make an appearance. It is the return of creatures from the margins who once again ignite the dancefloors as a collective act of healing.
Credits
Artistic direction, writing and costumes Johanna Rocard
DJ Set Amandine Braud
Team Nina Berclaz, Matthieu Blond, Tsaom Damesi, Mouniratou Taïrou, Nina Calabre
Picture Estelle Chaigne
Technics Lucas Elzière
Johanna Rocard - BRAVE Compagnie
At the crossroads of performing, visual and sound arts, BRAVE COMPAGNIE welcomes, produces and disseminates the creations of visual artist and choreographer Johanna Rocard, as well as collaborations with Estelle Chaigne, Amandine Braud and all individuals mentioned as associated artists.
Brave Compagnie does things with heart, offering a space for polymorphic creations and inclusive collaborations where individual and collective bodies, ancient and contemporary rituals, struggles of yesterday and today, drums and techno, the living and the dead, still and moving images, narratives and fictions, joy and resistance intertwine.
Brave doesn’t take the term company lightly. It implements and embodies artistic forms that give significant space to connections, care, support, and group spirit. At Brave, the commons are both the subject, artistic framework, and methodology, striving as much as possible to distance itself from hierarchical relationships and produce art collectively.
Brave Compagnie is a collective body made up of choreographic and artistic acts, creative research, territorial projects, and a laboratory of thought, grounded in reality and driven by the poetic urgency that characterizes times of upheaval.
On a village square, at the edge of a forest, in the heat of a dancefloor, around a fire, in the pages of a publication, on a stage, in an exhibition hall, and more, Brave Compagnie writes emancipatory stories of individual and collective bodies, reaching toward the times to come.