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Mozaïk Ballet'

The company

A contemporary identity

The company of the dance school L'Atelier du Mouvement, in Nantes. Since 2002, Mozaïk Ballet' has trained its own dancers and built a repertoire of original works across contemporary, neo-classical and modern jazz.

Founded
2002Founded
Works in the repertoire
25Works in the repertoire
Disciplines crossed
3Disciplines crossed

The company of L'Atelier du Mouvement

Mozaïk Ballet' is the company of the dance school L'Atelier du Mouvement, in Nantes. School and company share the same director, Alexandra Gérard, a teacher certified by the French Ministry of Culture: one trains, the other creates, and dancers move naturally from the studio to the stage.

The company began in 2002, choosing to train its own dancers of all ages rather than take on an existing repertoire. Its line of research would be the making of an original, philosophical body of work aimed at the drifts of society, with one underlying theme: the duality between confinement and freedom. The first seven works followed that line.

The company has been invited to dance at the Cité des Congrès in Nantes, in a 2,000-seat auditorium.

Dance school

L'Atelier du Mouvement

www.nantesdanse.com

Tracking the forms of alienation

Through choreography of growing complexity, the forms of human alienation are tracked down and brought into the open.

In a chaotic world, we have become the prey of images. We have lost our bearings, overrun by viruses we believe to be external and foreign to us — when we are in fact their author, sometimes unwittingly, like the sorcerer's apprentice. We are no longer masters of nature as Descartes had hoped; above all, we have lost our autonomy.

No longer a free and conscious subject, the individual resembles an object tossed from one precipice to the next. Genuine relation to others has gone, because the social fabric has frayed and the communication we prize so highly is directed only at efficiency, excluding the weak and consigning them to ostracism.

This is therefore a political undertaking and, through that awareness, one about the human condition. The picture is a dark one, painting at once a society gripped by disarray and the existential anguish of the individual sealed in their bubble.

Will humanity find its way out of this drama?

Is there any hope of escaping, of recovering — or rather of finding — what is human? Alexandra Gérard sets out to answer that question, one that puts the very future of humankind at stake. In certain works, a glimmer of hope seems to appear.

But lucidity must come first in any undertaking, practical or theoretical alike, politics being inseparable from philosophy.

The neo-classical turn, then the dream

The company took a new direction in 2010 with “Regrets”, a ballet leaning towards the neo-classical. In 2011 it performed “Errances syncopées” on several occasions, venturing into free dance with no thematic constraint.

Since 2010, a shift has been visible in Alexandra Gérard's choreography. Imagination and poetry take precedence. The emphasis falls on the dream and its magical power, rather than on the societal questions raised by everyday reality.

Our commitments

Four principles have held the company's work together since it was founded. They are not a statement of intent: they describe what the company already does.

  1. Train, rather than recruit

    From 2002 onwards, the company chose to train its own dancers of all ages rather than hire finished performers. A dancer who joins does not arrive with a technique to apply: they build it with the choreographer, work after work.

  2. Open dance to every body

    From teenagers to adults, from advanced level to professional, with no height or body requirement. What is asked for is technical solidity, an appetite for research work and a taste for the collective — nothing else.

  3. Create, not revive

    The company does not stage an existing repertoire. Every piece is an original work born of its own research — first on the drifts of society and confinement, then, since 2010, on the dream and the imagination.

  4. Keep school and stage circulating

    The school L'Atelier du Mouvement and the company share the same director. Students see the stage close up, company dancers pass on what they know: the class feeds the work, and the work feeds the class.

Two companies, one body of work

Mozaïk Ballet' brings together two distinct ensembles, held to the same demands and meeting on the same stage.

The junior company's dancers on stage

Junior company

The youngest dancers, teenagers, involved in the creative work and already facing an audience. This is where the stage is learned: holding a role, listening to the group, entering a choreographic language.

The adult company's dancers in rehearsal

Adult company

The adult dancers, from advanced level to professional. They carry the works of the repertoire and work closest to the choreographer, through improvisation, research and contact.

Training the dancer

The company trains student dancers across several disciplines, from teenagers to adults, women and men, from advanced dancers to professionals. Its spirit moves between contemporary, neo-classical and modern jazz, the better to serve choreographic creation through improvisation, research, contact work and the exchange between choreographer and dancer.

Every form of dance is explored, to support the works staged in the company's productions: competitions, festivals, open stages, galas and events.

  • Contemporary
  • Neo-classical
  • Modern jazz
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The full company in movement on stage

The repertoire

25 works, since 2003.

See the repertoire