DANSER (France) – April 2011 by Philippe Verrièle
Enola's Children folowed by Libre/reload by Eric Oberdorff
The first of the two solos, performed by an incredibly hieratic Gildas Diquero, evokes a necessarily serious Japan. The piece is old, ages well and keeps its evocative power.
The second, replay of a quartet created in 2008, is meant to be abstract as a study. But here, carried by the amazing Emma Lewis as inhabited by a serious and pregnant universe, this piece takes a strange meaning. From the back wall where she appears stuck to the luminous path that she follows, the dancer has of course her freedom of movement, but each of those she ventures seems the result of a serious challenge to the pain. The fluid and liberated moves hit the intention, austere until the dark. And one can not help but see in this a way of beautifully crafted danced metaphysics.
DANSER (France) – November 2011 by Isabelle Calabre
preview
International Dance Festival of Cannes
… The new mythologies are the guiding line adopted by Frederic Flamand, Director of the International Dance Festival of Cannes. A cross-sectional theme and a very eclectic result...
... At the mythologies related to the body, he adds those of the Image, present in many choreographies, and that of the technology as tool and grammar. One way to question the specific place of dance, through different pieces as different as inspired.
Within six days are presented not less than fifteen performances of which in opening a creation of the Compagnie Humaine, Butterfly Soul. Produced by the festival, this self-portrait coupled with virtual images explores, according to its author Eric Oberdorff, the fragile state of the artist...
MONACO HEBDO (Monaco) – November 2011 by C.B.
The National Theatre of Nice presents from 19 to 21 October, Un autre rêve américain (Another American Dream), choreographed by the Compagnie Humaine. It is the young choreographer Eric Oberdorff who offers this piece for a quintet of dancers, three women and two men. His credo? Telling the fragility of those whom life has not spared. Gestures, delicate and round, is soon electrified by uncontrolled access of sound and fury. The dance is getting stronger, quickly finding a rock spirit, especially with background music borrowed from Tom Waits, John Cage, Billie Holiday and Patti Smith. The political ambitions of the consumer society made in USA are highlighted, the texts of Kerouac, Bukowski, Brautigan and even Whitman, who embody the beat generation, overlap with dance steps. The purpose of Oberdorff? "To Inscribe his dance in a counterculture tradition." And he succeeds brilliantly.
LA STRADA (France) – n°162, 17 October / 6 November 2011 by Valérie Juan
The people at the heart of the dance
Within a few years, the Compagnie Humaine founded by Eric Oberdorff succeeded to impose its own vision of dance. In performing its pieces on the French stages but also in Europe, or participating in creations for students, as recently for the Dance Department of the University of North Carolina, the Compagnie Humaine writes its history, while promoting the City of Nice that it has chosen as home port. The National Theatre of Nice therefore welcomes the company for three days with two choreographies that can enhance the chosen artistic plurality, real guide line of the company since its inception. The documentary film "Petrushka's Journey" is an original approach in which the video puts dance in the heart of a story of a social nature. Whether struggling to become integrated, or struggling to survive like in "Another American Dream", each piece chose to put the importance of the human being at the center of its creation.
DANSER magazine (France) 12/2010 by Bérengère Alfort
The Compagnie Humaine
Based in Nice, Eric Oberdorff and his accomplice Cecile Robin Prévallée create in a subtle way pieces with universal themes.
From the outset, one is struck by the scope and sensitive emotional engagement of the work of this choreographer unclassifiable in the world of dance.
Thus, a piece like Absence reveals smoothly, through the movements roundness and the subtle interplay between the performers, the pain of those who tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to help others in times of mourning. Without other challenge than being the vehicle of a universal feeling. Because what matters to our artist is "not to forget the audience and their expectations, without creating what it wants to see. I am not of those who receive grants for basic research and are far from thinking in the maturation process of a project, what matters is that the viewer finds and recognizes his doubts, feelings even anxieties." And anxiety, fear, in its universal and all different aspects, is precisely the challenge of his next creation Leviathan.
The piece is based on topics of the fear of others, fear of water shortage as well, since it started from the reading of Moby Dick.
The man in the universe and its natural fear of the unknown, death, and these who is different. To make tangible this perspective, Eric Oberdorff turns himself in danger, because letting go more than in his previous service work, giving free rein to improvise performers.
Consistency between work and life he assumes "It might be surprising that I, who come from Paris Opera, Monte Carlo Ballet, who have created pieces for Marseille National Ballet among others, for important structures (I remember Ballet Mainz, where I was touched by and infinite respect and trust close to a blank check), can also venture to create a movie* on Ibrahim Hassan, a young man from a tough neighborhood with a very difficult background, who sees his conscience emerge through dance. Ibrahim marked me in my path as human being for whom movement is the hope of salvation. "
This consistency goes, too, in the sense of creating a performance for prestigious MACVAL (Contemporary Art Museum of Val de Marne) but also for MACC (House for Contemporary Art) in Fresnes, for a solo performer with his assistant and close dancer, Cécile Robin Prévallée. "It's part of our commitment to accept projects with different social spans. "
For the dancer, the implication meant to shape an experiment interacting with the place, inhabiting the space with a haunting and expressive poetry expression, with sleek although partially improvised movement, nourished by her experience of classically trained soloist, but also to run workshops with North African women who speak almost no French.
For her, who was chosen by Joëlle Bouvier to embody Juliet for the Geneva Ballet, by Bejart for the role of the Chosen of the Rite, or by Belarbi Kelemenis, to name a few choreographer, the challenge is the word of order: "I do not understand an artistic career without endangering, neither questionning. If I chose to leave the ballet company life, it is to make sense and refuse to let myself be carried away by the easiness. Unlike Eric, I do not feel as a choreographer since my intelligence is more instinctive than his desire to build, but I see myself invested with responsibility, that to confront with different artistic, economic, and social worlds. Without that, my art would die suffocated by complacency ... "
It will be understood, the motto of this team is integrity.
* Sur la route de Petrouchka, 2008
IMMO LUXE (France/Russia/UK/Italy) 11-12/2010
Internationale Tanzmesse Düsseldorf
The eighth edition of one of the most important international dance event was in full swing, from August 25 to 28 in Düsseldorf. We were there. The opportunity to take a look of the global landscape of living art.
A priori nothing predestined Germany (with less companies and subsidies than in France) to be the cradle of promises and bets in contemporary dance. [...] The philosophy of this international celebration is equality, and intellectual and human availability. [...]
If Europe and France are well represented, especially with the Compagnie Humaine and its magic duet on the loss, the relative powerlessness of the altruistic help in the mourning, it was also dizzy to see the cross of Taiwanese [...] and American [...]
DANSER magazine (France) 10/2010 by Bérengère Alfort
The Tanzmesse in Düsseldorf
The eighth edition of this major international dance fair closed its doors 28 August. 230 exhibitors, 29 countries represented, 300 known and emerging companies... A nice balance.
[...] It also discovers companies at the edge of all roads, such as the Compagnie Humaine and its magic duet on the fragility of human beings powerless to help others ... [...]
LA REVUE MARSEILLAISE DU THEATRE (France) 05/2010
Les vertiges de l'immobilité (Vertigos of Stillness)
Mikado game of a life where you might have to move in a small space or barcode of an existence in a society where everything is calibrated and quantified? Eric Oberdorff describes in "Les vertiges de l'immobilité" with appropriate grace on the Partita No. 2 in D minor by JS Bach, "ideal and resolutely modern combination of a heightened spirituality and implacable mathematics", our games of balance and imbalance measured in paradox with our perpetual motion. "Just for example, finishing two minutes into the streets to see how it became almost impossible to stop in a society that has become dependent, addicted to speed and change: perpetual motion, incessant flow of communications and information, instant gratification of desires, always travel faster machines with ever increasing speeds. Dizziness. "
Eric Oberdorff, after amongst others the Paris Opera, the Zurich Ballet and the Ballets de Monte Carlo, was quoted in 2001 among the outstanding young choreographers before founding the Compagnie Humaine in 2002. It is with the National Ballet of Marseille that he had just created at the Opéra de Marseille Les vertiges de l'immobilité, a success made of accuracy and dance beauty punctuated by "suspension of time, poetic stops, moments of verticality" danced exclusively by male performers in search of the exploration of perpetual motion. Remarkable.
LA PROVENCE (France) 24/04/2010
The Ballet de Marseille in Wonderland
...We saw three complementary dance momentum last night at the opera. [...] First, a quite jubilant dual, in black then in white, between the seven men creating Les vertiges de l'immobilité by Eric Oberdorff and then the six women matching the "Six Giselles" by Olivia Grandville. In a forest of metal tubes, in a play of refined lights by Arnaud Viala, seven dancers in a dark suit challenge each other with flexible body combinations […]
the French Swiss magazine for culture and entertainment
MURMURES MAGAZINES (Switzerland) 01/02/2010
'Blackbird', 'Dov'è la luna', 'Etre' : it is the programm offered by the Geneva Ballet for this beginning of year
... Finally, the evening ends with 'Etre', a colorful creation by Eric Oberdorff on a music by Vivaldi. For 45 minutes, the audience was literally spellbound: the space of the scene is brilliantly served by twelve dancers and some stunning duets leave us breathless ...
BALLETTANZ (Germany) 01/2010
Highlights
Eric Oberdorff remains a secret. While his piece "Libre"(2008) is performed still now since weeks at the Theater Hagen, he had already won in 2001 with "Impression Lumières Fugitive" the 1st Prize in the international competition for choreographers in Hannover. But, because lives in Nice and not in Paris, because he has choreographed Giessen - we also have seen him in Mainz, Oberdorff and his Compagnie Humaine founded in 2002 carry with them this heavy burden, the fact that the world of dance still think it needs to avoid the province
He is now on view with his former boss from Monte-Carlo, Jean-Christophe Maillot, at the Geneva Grand Théâtre, big house welcoming such difficult cases : Maillot re-stages his «Dov’è la luna» for the Geneva Ballet and Oberdorff presents his creation "Être" on music by Vivaldi: neoclassical, raw, sculptural.
NICE-MATIN (France) 20/10/2009 by Aurore Busser
... surprises by Eric Oberdorff
"If I had not met dance, I'd be on a bench ... or in jail" At the heart of his choreographic performance opening the season of "Made in Cannes, " Eric Oberdorff offered ... a documentary, that he has shot. Original approach by the choreographer who has followed the path, the life of a young Comorian, Ibrahim, who tells his "journey" in expressive close-ups. Arrived in France, he landed in a difficult social context. Without never making the leap into petty crime, he discovered dance. An ideal.
The film ends and we watch then the creation of a dance-theater piece "Another American Dream" where we find Ibrahim Hassani being part of the amazing "Compagnie Humaine" of Eric. A piece in a coproduction with the Ballet Preljocaj, engaging, woven with sensitivity, full of tenderness, rebellion and humanity. Eric Oberdorff has recreated the world of that America drawn by Tennessee Williams, in which intersect fragile beings that life has mistreated ....
PERFORMARTS (France) 04/2009 by Brigitte Chéry
Authors' Spring in Nice, "Corps étranger" ("Foreign Body") at the TNN: aesthetic fluidity
The meeting of the "Corps étranger" 's text by Didier Van Cauwelaert could only inspire the Compagnie Humaine and its choreographer Eric Oberdorff, very comfortable with dance-theater as we have already overcome it with Sarajevo's Diary. The advantage of such a meeting is what second author brings to this text. As we recognize the paw of a painter or the colors of the garden of a landscape designer, it is the sensitivity to human beings, familiarity between the bodies and the creativity of Oberdorff that we most appreciated in this adaptation. The two dancers, Cécile Robin Prévallée and Laurent Trincal perform a delicate and spiritual bodywork, a smooth dance that flows like the offering of a poem, with beautiful melee of a couple which forms and keeps the audience spellbound. The tensions, intimate struggles, suffering in solitude expressed by Laurent Trincal disappear with the arrival of the young female dancer. The always delicate encounter between two people seems at times perilous, unexpected but always smooth despite a stage cluttered by different tables and elements, or maybe because of it. The musician Merakhaazan creates throughout the show a unique world, poetic moments that resonate with assumed doubts and questions. Sometimes the shapes of the bass and the female body merge. Half an hour of pure delight, aesthetic fluidity.
LA MARSEILLAISE (France) 18/02/2009 by Jean Barak
To each his America
In residence for his creation at the Pavillon Noir, Eric Oberdorff presented "Another American Dream" these 12 and 13 February 2009.
For the fifty-year-olds, it is the one of Vietnam, for the forty-year-olds, the one of the cold war. Eric Oberdorff is one of those: His America is the one of the arrogance of Ronald Reagan ruling the world, the largest of the "democracies" installing military dictatorships throughout Latin America, waging war wherever she has interests to preserve. That of a ruthless neo-colonialism in the name of God and law. For others, this will be the one of the second major global world crisis and of the advent of a half Black man, son of a Kenyan, to the highest office in the country of slavery.
Poets
Yet America is not only that: each crime reveals a conscience, each brute makes a pet to stand up, with his derisory arms facing force and cynicism. It is also the one of those left behind as described in Tennessee Williams' novels or Edward Hopper's paintings. But one swallow does not make a summer, and the vast fortunes of the American dream are more than ever built on absolute poverty. It is this America that Eric Oberdorff choreographs: he puts in space texts by Charles Bukowski, Walt Whitman and Jim Harrison as well as songs by Tom Waits, the bluesman of urban drifts, Patti Smith, the untamed rebel, and Billie Holiday, the torn satin voice of the American ghettos. The one also of the contemporary performer John Cage.
Bitter America
We are in a warehouse, a black worker moves boxes. His work is repetitive, sterile and without end. The decor becomes imperceptibly a bedroom where a woman falls asleep and dreams her America. Three women and two men escaped from Maguy Marin's "May Be" move about in a compact group. Gradually they acquire an identity of its own and live their own life, a hip hop solo, a tender or crual duet. Coffins return from war, no matter which one, each President has his own, the women weep over the flag. Oberdorff's dream of America is a nightmare that only poetry makes fit to live in. His dance is a theater of images, minimalist, it goes straight to the point. The translated texts are strong such as pictures, others accessible only to English speaking people are not for generally monolingual French people who lose most of it. This is not Oberdorff's fault if they were daydreaming during English classes. Anyway, if you let yourself to be carried by Tom Waits, Patti Smith or Billie Holiday, even without understanding, everyone can dream about his own America's through Eric Oberdorff's subliminal images in countre-jour light.
Eric Oberdorff : First Prize at the Conservatoire National de Nice in 1984, then at the Ecole Supérieure de Danse de Rosella Hightower, and that of the Paris Opera. He joins the Salzburg's, Monte Carlo's and Zürich's Ballets. He danced for Maillot, Kylian, Balanchine, Forsythe, Childs, Uotinen, Armitage, Neumeier, etc.. Since 1997 he presented his choreographic works in various dance festivals. He is looked upon as a "young emerging choreographer" of the international scene. He founded his company in 2002, the Compagnie Humaine.
ZIBELINE n°16 (France) 19/02-19/03/2009
America's dust
Leaving abstract writing focused on movement and lights, Eric Oberdorff creates Un autre rêve américain (Another American Dream), a piece in which texts and musics have obsessed dancers as well as himself. More narrative than his previous creation Libre, Un autre rêve américain is full of references to Jim Harrison, Thomas Savage, Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg and is haunted by the voices of Patti Smith, Billie Holiday, Tom Waits ...
Without ever falling into the illustration, Oberdorff succeeds the tour de force of telling a state of "being in a state of emergency", the one of the excluded of the American dream, without that the texts hinders the movements of the bodies. In continuous tension, the five dancers are able to find sincerity and simplicity in the accuracy of their movements: a simple light touch is enough to evoke bewilderment or violence of a lovers duet. And always on musics which lead the scenes up to a climax. The whole room is bathed in movie like lights, set against the backdrop of "They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?", carried by romantic heroes characters as fragile and desperate as those of Russell Banks.
To give substance to this human tragedy and to tell disillusion, Oberdorff divides the space in two, introducing in this way a double temporality: there is this which is written across situations, voices and rhythms, there is what is danced through sensual lifts and inventive solos.
WESTFÄLISCHE RUNDSCHAU (Germany) 24/11/2008 by Björn Josten
"An extraordinary program was celebrated by a standing ovation… The ballet companies enchanted the audience… One of the highlights was the Compagnie Humaine from Nice. Audrey Vallarino and Gildas Diquero have delighted the same way the public and Ricardo Fernando* on the quiet notes of Arvo Pärt. "It was close to perfection", he held, visibly moved after their performance…"
*Director of Ballett Hagen and organizer of the "3rd International AIDS TanzGala im Theater Hagen"
WESTFALENPOST (Allemagne) 24/11/2008 by Sebastian Jansen
"High-level, full of grace and beautiful ... Seven dance companies have illuminated of three hours long dance fireworks the benefit evening for the fight against AIDS in Hagen... A must see: the incredibly beautiful and graceful pas de deux of the Compagnie Humaine of Nice on the elegiac music "Spiegel im Spiegel" by Arvo Pärt. Ricardo Fernando* said: "We can say that the choreography was very close to perfection"…"
*Director of Ballett Hagen and organizer of the "3rd International AIDS TanzGala im Theater Hagen"
Magazine SCENE (Japan) 09/2008 by Masumi Kawakita
Compagnie Humaine / Eric Oberdorff - Choreography “Enola's Children”
Many pieces about Japan have only a light flavour of it. This choreography reproduces remarkably the soul of Japan. According to the programm, the title comes from the nickname "Enola Gay" of the plane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and the piece tells about the rebuilding of a devastated by war Japan.
If this is not so obvious, the choreographer has perfectly understood and portrayed the spiritual essence of the Bushi-Dô ("warrior's way") of the samouraïs. (13 July, Studio des Hivernales, Avignon)
http://www.office-ai.co.jp/_edi/_edi-history/edi-200809-01.html
MOUVEMENT (France) 23/07/2008 by Eve Beauvallet
Pull together...
Without doubt one of the peculiarities of this festival, in its anarchy, is that it causes unexpected echoes between creations that nothing seems to link at first sight. Insofar as the order of viewing performances is often arbitrary, it is sometimes curious that coherence can emerge.
My first two Avignon shows (the first one should be more surely named "experiment") do not tolerate being confronted. Nothing in aesthetics, with the object in the design of the tray or the activation of the spectator would justify any correlation whatsoever. However, it was a nice coincidence to go see a show on reconstruction when still tinged with persistent fever bequeathed by Castellucci's Purgatorio the day before.
In the"Hivernales' studio" , “Enola's Children” and “Absence”, two short pieces proposed by choreographer Eric Oberdorff from the Provence-Côte-d'Azur Region, suspended for a time the heat and ambient frenzy. The fullness, sensitivity, calm bodies of the aptly named Cie Humaine intended perhaps to heal some ailments. Or ask how to find antidotes.
When everything seems to collapse and not let up until the pain, when, seemingly implacable, distress takes hold and bruises the skins, where does come from this momentum which sometimes helps us back to our feet? Where will we draw the unsuspected energy which reactivates, gives back the movement?
With these two pieces, Eric Oberdorff works on a stage of the pain that is often left over, before which many performances often stop. The one which comes after the pain, from the reconstruction, whether intimate - in Absence - or collective - in Enola's Children. The time of the scar, this magic stage when it closes and becomes trace, and sometimes ornament.
“Enola's Children” is the first phase of a diptych called “Post War Dreams”, snapshot of two today societies in which beyond devastating shocks, men have found somehow strength to learn to live together again. “Enola's Children”, in memory of the nickname that the pilots gave to the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima: Enola Gay. The tension of this society, imbued with ancient feudalism as well as ultramodern aspirations, is formulated in the grooves and palpitations of one single dancer's body . “Enola's Children “is focused fantastically channeled through the power and millimetric precision Gildas Diquero's movements. On the "Hivernales' Studio" naked stage, he unfolds around him a space of a palpable magnitude which is inhabited by Anthony Rouchier's musical creation.
“Absence” could be the intimate side of it, even if the piece is autonomous. This second dance moment stages a disoriented body, off centered and without hanging point - where “Enola's Children's” drew its energy firmly in the ground - a body weakened by some loss as well as by its exposure to the sight of spectators, a body that most of the tiniest blow could finally break down, if there was not the venue, discreet and sensitive, of the Other. As an attentive valve which always anticipate clashes and attempts of the vulnerable person, Gildas Diquero comes now divert, now recover or now re-boost the movement of Audrey Vallarino, without ever her being aware of what saves her and little by little transforms her. He is the guardian. This kind of duet, where one is not aware of another, has often created moments of pure beauty in choreographing art. The voluptuous pleasured piece “Absence” is one of them. This spiral of decline and recovery that we are seeing, far from being hell, offers one of the most oxygenating moment.
LES TROIS COUPS (France) 27/07/2008 by Anne Losc
Celestial dance
Amongst the thousand plays performed in this very moment in Avignon, there's dance. Eric Oberdorff gives us two chosen pieces - "Enola's Children" and "Absence" - which show the diversity of its choreographic language and which take us in various and deep emotional spheres.
The Hivernales' Studio, tiny place for great dancers.
Taking as its theme the reconstruction of Japan after the explosion of nuclear bombs, Oberdorff seems to want, with the solo Enola's Children, to explore the state of the man after a trauma. He also studies the way of men to renew and rebuild.
Dancer Gildas Diquero, first lying and rolling on imself, almost naked and very vulnerable, reappropriates gradually space. Like a phoenix, he rises from his ashes. He dons new clothes, both traditional and contemporary. His movements from martial arts and dance, mix ritual precision and fluidity of gesture. The electronic music composed by APART for this solo, echoes the hyper-modernity of today Japan, while also using traditional string instruments. This music dialogues surprisingly with the timeless movements of the dancer.
Other atmosphere, and other sensitivities with Absence. A dancer, first on her own, combines fragility and tension through a choreography that hollows feeling of vulnerability. She dances on a piece of music by Arvo Pärt, De profundis, a music for organ and choir of men. This slender figure dressed in white wanders in a solemn musical atmosphere. Audrey Vallarino seeks her place in an in-between, between land and air, dancing both on the floor but sometimes reaching arabesques.
She is then joined by Gildas Diquero in a majestic duet. The music, always by Arvo Pärt, but in a completely different register, oscillates between piano and strings. “Spiegel im Spiegel”, often heard, is enhanced by the choreography that it accompanies here. There is so much poetry, unveiled fragility in those lifts which changes in the hollow of the bodies. The dancer supports the dancer who, in turn, uses her balance to outline a new form. There is always this tension between reassuring contact and instability in solitude.
The force of the evanescent notes of piano-strings duet dialogs with the dancers' duet. The lights, intense but non-intrusive, highlight the bodies' lines, the tiniest muscle movements. And towards the end of this magic moment, a lift so close to the audience that the waves of dance swoop on us. The movement is spread in all its creativity and rigour, releasing an emotion that I am not ready to forget.
ARTS CÔTE D'AZUR (France) 09/05/2008 by Olivier Marro
... “I would not believe in a God who does not know how to dance” said Nietzsche, Eric Oberdorff, for his part, makes men dance on a planet made white-hot by paradoxes, dreams and torments. It is through their bodies that he projects his poetic movement focused on energy and emotion...
NICE-MATIN (France) 24/01/2008
Under Eric Oberdorff’s charm
... Made In Cannes Festival attracts more and more people to the Licorne Theater. For a creation, the word spreads like a lightning. A lot was expected from Libre, the new creation of Eric Oberdorff, choreographer trained at the Cannes International Dance School, for his beautiful Compagnie Humaine. Many professionals, members of subsidies committes and others, came for this occasion from Aix, Draguignan, Marseille and Avignon. The performance met their expectation... Libre is undoubtedly the most beautiful piece that Eric Oberdorff has made until today... This piece is delicate like lace, with very refined musics. It is intimate, tender, delicate and remarkably danced...
24 HEURES (Switzerland) 14-15/07/2007
Human too human
... Combining uncluttered lined and delicate movements to the bewitching minimalism of the composer Arvo Pärt’s music (“Spiegel im Spiegel”), the Compagnie Humaine gave to watch a very beautiful moment of humanistic grace. Choreographed by Eric Oberdorff, who favors a kind of contact dance made of lightness, the duet “Absence” materializes the unlikely union between force and fragility, increasing light contacts, supports and lifts between the slender Audrey Vallarino and Eric Oberdorff, dancer of imposing stature. Taken from the piece “A Momentary Lapse of Being”, this few minutes of absolute tenderness for the human kind are of a refreshing sobriety although opening on a world made of possibilities and of sensuousness...
WWW.ECHO-ONLINE.DE (Germany) 24/05/2007
...There is also lots of magic put in “Little voices in my head” by Eric Oberdorff, mingled with dance, surrealism and art of illusion. Texts, picture and music of Anthony Rouchier - sometimes heartbeat rythms, sometimes melodic waves - dive thereby into the virtual, accelerating the pictures through a video projection...
HTTP://BLOGS.AOL.FR/JUANVALCHRIS/LE06DANSE (France) 11/10/2006 by Valérie Juan
Let's head for Nice, and its Lino Ventura Theater to discover the last Compagnie Humaine's creation.
Eric Oberdorff offers us this time a journey which takes us from Japan to central Europe. What do they have in common ? They experienced the ravages of war. After ? How can we live after ? That is the question asked by "Post War Dreams", une creation in two parts.
The sun rises on Japan. Minute suns pass by on a partition screen while the shadow of a dancer appears... No, he is not a dancer: he is samouraï. From dawn, in the peacefulness of a Japanese garden, he is praticing a ritual to prepare himsel to the battle. But this time, the warrior will not be able to triumph with his sword. In an apocalyptic explosion, it is the whole value system which blows up. The man who survives must now find himself between a world which is not anymore and a world which wants to be. At the end of a long quest, Enola's children will find the path of appeasement through a rebirth. "Enola's children" is a solo performed by Gildas Diquero on a music by Anthony Rouchier. The video which constitutes an important contribution of this creation is made by Leili Gueranfar.
Second chapter of the diptych "Post War Dreams": "Sarajevo's Diary". New approach for the choreographer who transforms himself into a writer on this occasion. Conceived as a diary written day after day, it is a real story which is told us : the story of a journey to Sarajevo, ten years after the bullets stopped to whistle. Deep and realistic text. The answers to the questions are given through the dance because movements can give more meaning than certain views. You just have to watch Mayra Morelli in her solo personifying a woman stroke by misfortune to understand all the distress which can exist in the depths of a human being. But ten years are gone by and life has gradually returned to normal. If pain is not easy to erase for the oldest, younger people bring their life force and their enthusiasm. This is how all along his piece Eric Oberdorff alternate grave choreographies with much lighter, even folk moments. In Sarajevo too, the path of appeasement exists in the rebirth of a new life.
LA STRADA (France) 3-17/04/2006 by Valérie Juan
Vertigo
"4.48 Psychosis" is a vertiginous diving in the torments of the human mind.
Guts? Eric Oberdorff does not lack of any to leave the comfort of contemporary fluid and attractive lined creations for a choreographic play around the work of Sarah Kane. Strong and bold creation to which no-one can remain indifferent since the spectator is hustled in the depths of his being. "4.48 Psychosis" is preceded by two duets "Où sont passées..?" (part I) and "Impression lumières fugitives" which bring a global vision of the creative capacity of the choreographer. In complement, the photographic work of Malou of which Eric Oberdorff's work constitutes the source of inspiration will be presented.
HTTP://BLOGS.AOL.FR/JUANVALCHRIS/LE06DANSE (France) 01/02/2006 by Valérie Juan
Human, too human
There is a certainty with the work of Eric Oberdorff: whereas many consider him as the emerging choreographer in our area, his work does not show any overcautiousness. The proof was given us on January 28, at the Forum Jacques Prévert in Carros.
A first part is proposed to us to begin the evening carefully. "Où sont passées...?" and "Impression lumières fugitives" are two choreographies for two dancers: a man and a woman. Any decoration is useless: the dance is self sufficient in movement sequences of a very great strength. In the style of Russell Maliphant, it combines athletic lifts with a lightness of the gesture which gives all its intensity to the movements. The dance is powerful, deeply anchored in the ground, but its ceaseless and fluid rhythm brings a real elegance to it.
The second part enabled us to discover the Premiere of "4.48 Psychose".
Total rupture with what was already known. Total projection in another universe.
It is a daring bet for the choreographer who, far from settling in his choreographic know-how, leaves to research new territories, explores new ways of creation. All rests on the performer who, one hour during, will enter the skin of the character of Sarah Kane. Torments, drift, it makes us live her "pathological sorrow", locked up in "her prison of tears". Is it danced theatre or theatred dance?
The choreographer is made director. The dancer is made actress. Meeting of arts which always push back their own limits.
ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG MAINZ (Germany) 11/11/2005 & WIESBADENER KURIER (Germany) 11/11/2005 by Helena Sender-Petry
With « A Momentary Lapse of Being » (music of Arvo Pärt), the French young choreographer Eric Oberdorff created a masterpiece. (...) It is when Yuko Kato seeks to escape from the prison of human existence, alone or in her duet with Nick Hobbs, that the dance sequences reveal themselves to be the most penetrating. The contrast between nature shaken by spasms and that, peaceful, of the couple, is particularly moving: danced poetry.
DARMSTÄDTER ECHO (Germany) 11/11/2005 by Elfriede Schmidt
(...) In a furious paced dance, Oberdorff portrays the apocalypse and makes what seems familiar unknown by a permanent modification of the prospects on a bare and only effects lighted stage. But it is not all : with virtuosity and disturbing burlesque, the rhythm impulse given by the music is integrated with a very expressive narrative drama. Horror, chaos, distress and war win, the beauty criterions do not count anymore, post-human society causes scenes of fear and wrecks. Art, as Oberdorff shows it to us in his grandiose piece, incarnates a positive force which fights against this wreckage.
MAINZER RHEIN ZEITUNG (Germany) 11/11/2005 by Andreas Pecht
The Premiere of the young French Eric Oberdorff's choreography, « A Momentary Lapse of Being », was performed by the Ballett Mainz.
On the center of the stage, Yuko Kato and Nick Hobbs devote themselves to a duet on their own, which is at the moment and without any doubt one of the most moving and most tender creations of contemporary dance.
The music of Arvo Pärt, « Spiegel im Spiegel » (The mirror in the mirror) accompanies, in its touching simplicity, the union of two beings which, according to the very principles of dance, is based on the faith to never be abandoned, to always be supported and carried, even if the turn away of one from another leads to the fall.(...)
OFFENBACHER POST (Germany) 12/11/2005 by E. Mittwich
The piece is articulated around the topic of the fall in an obscure hole or some similar human catastrophes : « A Momentary Lapse of Being ». In a black space of which one of the walls is decorated with a mirror covering the height of a wall, the dancers move barefooted, first of all without music, then to the sound of it (...) The dancers offer a remarkable performance, and particularly Yuko Kato, soloist dancer, entirely concentrated on her interpretation.
STUTTGARTER NACHRICHTEN (Germany) 17/11/2005 by Isabelle V. Neumann-Cosel
(...)The universe of six dancers is found plunged into chaos, until Yuko Kato collects, in an impressive way, all the misery of the world on her gracious shoulders. A little later, Nick Hobbs, standing at her side, lifts her, without however succeeding to set her free. Oberdorff, young French founder and director of the Compagnie Humaine of Nice, has created a moving duet (...)
FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU (Germany) 12/11/2005 by Sylvia Staude
(...) Loneliness, vulnerability, desolation are at first evoked during sequences of modern dance. Then developps the gracious and carefully nuanced solo of the very expressive Yuko Kato, joined then by Nick Hobbs in a duet filled with sensitivity.
LA STRADA (Germany) 7-20/02/2005 by Valérie Juan
Revelation
… A man alone in the night is haunted by the phantoms of his past. Those emerge from the veil of his memory to bring back to him the intensity of his life experience, filled with melancholy, sadness... Sometimes also with appeasement. And then is the time which passes, unrelentingly: the needles of the clock which turn endlessly, without anyone having a hold over them, until the twilight of the life. A work of maturity ...
NICE-MATIN (France) 05/02/2005 by André Peyrègne
Sometimes, a scathing ballet
... Eric Oberdorff practises an extreme dance. the dancers dislocate themselves. There is something bewitching in their concert of torn movements ...
DANSER (France) 04/2004 by Agnès Izrine
... Danse à Lille... Small Open Scenes... The bonus gift, it is that the presented dance leaves the usual paths of the mode or the air of time. Thus of Eric Oberdorff who camps in Self Service a man in prey with his interior voice, as the dancer is in prey with his body, like humanity with its phantoms…
LA STRADA (France) 03/2004 by Valérie Juan
...Compagnie Humaine seeks to give a testimony, a feeling. This shows through in its creative work of which the essential goal is "the research of a movement simplicity which refuses the decorative one"… Eric Oberdorff keeps the taste of a work pushed at the extreme, only guarantor of an impeccable performance. From his journeys throughout the world, he came back with memories of cultures, meetings, visions which nourished his imagination in order to arise essence of it: the purified gesture…
NICE-MATIN (France) 17/11/2003
… " Territoire Zéro" is the very mastered and very accomplished choreographic translation of the young choreographer Eric Oberdorff’s declarations of intent … A poetry, a beauty that gives a remarkable notion of infinity emanates from "Territoire Zéro". A success… A piece of ballet which will stay in the memories...
CÔTE MAGAZINE (France) 11/2003 by Mireille Sartore
…The very young Compagnie Humaine is presenting a new choreography… For "Territoire Zéro", Eric Oberdorff took his inspiration from a text by Maurice G Dantec to create a show for two dancers with video… A company to keep a close eye on…
EL MUNDO / El Dia de Baleares (elmundo-eldia.com) (Spain) 08/02/2003
… Without forgetting Eric Oberdorff who at his quality of delightful dancer combines the one of the emerging promise of the choreographic world...
BALLETT-TANZ Aktuell / The Year Book 2001 (Germany) 9/2001
According to Klaus Witzeling (Hamburger Abendblatt), the "Outstanding Young Choreographer" of the year 2001 is Eric Oberdorff.
