Loïc Touzé

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2010: Loïc Touzé settles in Nantes. He engages with Anne Kerzerho Autour de la Table. This project questions the plurality of knowledge and practises surrounding the body in different cultural contexts and the interchange between them. During the 2009/2010 season Loïc Touzé creates La Chance at the Mettre en Scène festival (Rennes).
La Chance follows a line of investigation by presenting evidence into the relationship between the act of dancing such as it engages a performer in the immediacy of the stage, and the choreography in as much as it consists of coming forth in the form of writing. “To see without eyes, to feel without skin, to hear by weight, to understand that the floor is a source of imagination. To think in movement and to not be afraid of what you might encounter in the state of dance.” We can go back to Morceau (2001-2005), a piece conceived as an amalgam of micro-performances, to discover the start of this questioning of theatrical engagement, the expectations about a show and see the way it has informed the skills of the art-performance.

With Latifa Laâbissi (co-director of Compagnie 391 with Loïc Touzé at this time), Yves-Noël Genod and Jennifer Lacey, Morceau took part in restoring some of the elements which conventional stage writing is habitually driven to abandon. In 2003 Love, then 9 in 2007 deepened the relationship with visual artist Jocelyn Cottencin. A resolved mastery of the stage and investment in firstly the discussion about how to disseminate the gesture and secondly to renounce and return to the initial intentions behind this. Rigorous and audacious, these principles of investigation call into question the very implications of the choreographic act. This is after all achieved by way of ambitious approaches coming from a unique point of view. In the position of choreographer Loïc Touzé seems to continue to stimulate and stubbornly question the movements produced by the performer so he can attain the highest level so much the sooner. Throughout this process, we remark the renewal of critical appraisal, ensuring that the formal foundations of this progression are particularly robust.

Born in 1964, Loïc Touzé entered the school of the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris at 10 years old. From 1982 he danced in the troupe (Nureyev period) all the while taking part in numerous creations at the heart of GRCOP directed by Jacques Garnier. This was the case until he resigned in order to turn to New Dance and then he joined projects by Carolyn Carlson, Mathilde Monnier – who became one of his creative partners –, Jean-François Duroure, Catherine Diverrès and Bernardo Montet (1986-1991). The foundation of his own company with Fabienne Compet (1991) began a great period of exploration, sharpened by the discoveries on stage or in training of Dominique Bagouet (via Olivia Grandville) and Julyen Hamilton (contact-improvisation). The solo version of Dans les Allées, les Allées,… (1995) enjoyed great success, questioning the fundamentals of choreographic writing. A whole series of projects touched upon space in relation to representation from wasteland in Bilbao with visual artist Francisco Ruiz de Infante to the Centre d’Art Contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson where Un bloc (1997) thwarted the principles of interactivity which were currently in vogue. In this tradition, S’il y a Lieu put to work a reduced setting where the evidence of the dance is ruined by being subject to commentary (1999).

To analyse the preparation of a dancer and his work, Loïc Touzé immersed himself for a whole year in the experience of Mohini Attam who trained Brigitte Châtaigner. In his solo Elucidation with saxophonist Claude Delangle (IRCAM 2004), as with numerous other works, Loïc Touzé instituted a dialogue capable of improvisation with musicians Pascal Contet, Joëlle Léandre, Vincent Courtois, Jeanne Added, Cookie and Gilles Coronado.
Installed in Rennes in 1999, Loïc Touzé activated the social and collective conditions of invention, production and diffusion in the field of choreography. Déplacer (2000, a co-production with La Criée Centre d’art contemporain) presented and used the work of Catherine Contour, Myriam Gourfink, Xavier Leroy, Alain Michard, Jennifer Lacey and Jocelyn Cottencin. In the Paris region Loïc Touzé co-directed the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers with Yvane Chapuis and François Piron (2001-2006), while assisting the emergence of the Rennes based project, Aéroport International, a collective of artists who contributed to the realisation of Le Garage, a space for innovative new work.
Counting himself amongst the Signataires du 20 août, Loïc Touzé has invested much thought into the teaching of dance. Co-author of 10 propositions pour une école, he has developed an important teaching role for himself at the heart of the TNB school, at the university of Rennes or Paris 8, at the CNDC in Angers and within the Ex.e.r.ce training of the CCN of Montpellier as well as an increasingly bigger role in overseas teaching. (Forum Dança – Lisbon, Impuls Tanz – Vienna, Tsekh summer school – Moscow, Instituto Universitario de Arte – Buenos Aires).
Gérard Mayen