GIAP THAN

Régine Chopinot - Ballet Atlantique – CNN de La Rochelle

In her piece GIAP THAN (Year of the Ape) French choreographer Régine Chopinot makes her fierce dancers dive into the waves of an immensely large cloth created out of 1000 advertisement banners gathered in all the cities of Vietnam. In this production, the outstanding and most controversial representative of contemporary dance in France today is once again in search of interdisciplinary collaboration – this time with visual artist Jean Michel Bruyère and musician Gianni-Grégory Fornet. As the director of the choreographic center in La Rochelle, choreographic and educational work are for her inextricably linked. For the last seven years, she has been teaching dancers of the Opera Ballet and Dance College in Hanoi/Vietnam. GIAP THAN developed out of these workshops and the continuous artistic exchange involved and is the fourth production of this kind. The technical perfection and virtuosity of the dancers, who are trained exclusively in traditional and classical dance, but also their openness towards the experiment, revealed to Chopinot totally new dimensions in her work on the borderline between tradition and the modern.

Co-produced by:
BARC – CCN La Rochelle, Festival de Hué 2004

Supported by:
The French Embassy in Vietnam,
l’Espace – the French Cultural Center of Hanoi,
The Opera Ballet and Vietnam Dance College