LES DANSES DU QUAI ARTISTIC RESIDENCE
21-26 june 2022
About the residence
The first edition of the Compagnons Lyriques residence took place from June 21 to 26, 2022 in the Meuse department. 33 young artists aged 18 to 27 took part, from French conservatories (CNSM of Paris and Lyon, Pôle Supérieur de Paris-Boulogne-Billancourt, IdsaT Toulouse, CRR de Paris, Boulogne-Billancourt, Rueil-Malmaison, Versailles, Toulouse) and foreigners (Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussels, Conservatory of Bologna, University of Montreal, University of the Arts in Belgrade). For four days, these young musicians and singers worked on the creation of the musical Les Danses du Quai composed by one of the participants, as well as on the preparation of a symphonic concert.
This initiative is inspired by the former Tanglewood Academy in Massachusetts. Founded by conductor Serge Koussevitzky in 1940, it gave young instrumentalists and composers from all over the world the opportunity to meet for two weeks in the summer for a creation, under the watchful eye of international luminaries from the orchestra and the composition. This academy has been a launching pad for musicians with immense backgrounds such as Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein. The students were mentored this year by chef Joël Soichez.
Distribution
Sylvain Sapé
Maxime Martelot
Arié Vaisbrot
Albertine Algoud
Yônah Bion
Mobilising a generation of talents
In the anxiety-provoking context of young people facing increasingly visible challenges, this student initiative aims to set an example of a generation concerned with ensuring the next generation. With this joint work of young people with varied backgrounds (instrument, singing, cultural communication, public policies), the academy aims to bring together around forty determined young people. The musical comedy composed for the occasion features characters sharing the doubts and reflexes of this generation, with the aim of giving a picture of itself during the shows on June 24 and 25.
Commitment to making classical music accessible in the French countryside
The academy also aims to maintain reciprocal contributions with its host territory. It is organized in the Brasserie de la Dieue (55320 Dieue-sur-Meuse), a beer factory offering artist residencies in the Meuse. The object is above all not to stick to the artistic requirement the image of a stilted and inaccessible music, but of an applied festivity. Thus, to break the barrier between the orchestra and its host territory, the academy has integrated four student instrumentalists from the St-Jean de Verdun college into its training. The college students were mentored by young people from the orchestra on their instrumental parts and played with the ensemble during the concert on June 25.
The piece
Les Danses du Quai
The composer's foreword
With thirteen dance numbers weaving a plot between five characters, Les Danses du Quai seeks to transcribe an idea of joy by adapting to our days the impetuous heritage of Offenbach to Leonard Bernstein via the Legrand-Demy duo. The late 19th century operetta and the 1960s Broadway musical share a common denominator of vitality and mischief that I have sought to express with the words and habits of today. The work is structured as a contemporary extension of traditional Baroque dance suites. Dances in the Baroque period (17th-18th century), were frequent among the instrumental pieces and often presented in the form of suites. The musicians then alternated rather fast numbers (the Courante, the Allemande, the Gigue) and rather slow ones (the Sarabande, the Bourrée, the Gavotte, the Minuet). Les Danses du Quai were born from the idea of taking up these sequences of different rhythms and atmospheres, with dances drawing on a modern collective imagination. The piece includes, for example, tango, flamenco, Provençal rounds or ragtime, and articulated around a contemporary narrative.
Théophile Lepage
Synopsis
The stage is set in a train station in Paris. Five characters appear. First two jovial and jokey boys from the South of France who came to spend a week to have fun in the capital. Then two young girls with an unlikely friendship. The first, Parisian and accustomed to a certain pomp and recognition from those around her, returns from three weeks in a countryside she despises. The other is a less confident foreign student, contradictory, both bubbly and gloomy, who comes to pick up her friend at the station to celebrate her return in the evening. The fifth character is an roaming musician, clever, crafty and seductive, whose job is to hypnotize travelers with his guitar to extract money from them. The play recounts the meeting of these five characters and their different aspirations and characters, to the rhythms of the station musicians coming out of the orchestra, who pass from time to time on stage to pace the plot by accompanying the singing of the characters in an instrumental solo. These characters call for crossed games of seduction, supported by a series of leaping dances. In a light tone, the piece broaches the debates of an uncertain generation, which reinvents its relationship to pleasure and emotions..
Cast
Stage management
Pierre Venissac
Accompanist
Tanguy Verneuil
César
Maxime Martelot
Le Guitariste
Sylvain Sapé
Martin
Arié Vaisbrot
Adela
Djurdja Mihic (Meuse) /Albertine Algoud (Vincennes)
Sixtine
Yônah Bion
Artistic team
Musical direction
Théophile Lepage
© 2022 Les Compagnons Lyriques.