While you can’t really create an artist, you can create the space for one to emerge. S. Sloat in Mouvement Research Journal #31
Dance residencies – creating differently
Mains d’Œuvres is an independent art space which aims at inventing a new way of supporting artists and their creativity. We try to instigate and nurture rigorous discourse and wide-ranging experimentation in movement-based forms and to encourage new choregraphy.
Mains d’Œuvres serves as a creative laboratory and incubator for emerging artists and ideas in a supportive, guided environment. Mains d’Œuvres supports creative process and not necessarily the final product which is why we mainly provide an extensive artist-in-residence programmes, all of them tailored to meet the artists’ needs and wishes.
Mains d’Œuvres wishes to be the creative tool which invents a new relationship to the artists, to their project and to the community - a tool providing the artist with the time, the support and the trust necessary to foster poetic intelligence.
The dance residency programs are open to projects which are singular in their research as well as in their attempt to investigate, (re)question or rethink the art of choreography and more generally, our society. We welcome dance or non dance projects, urgent or derisive, projects which are rooted in the textures of body, soul or time, which blur borders between arts, which take a stand rather than atttempt to seduce. Purely aesthetic dance, purely virtuoso dance, dance qith no consideration for the public, dance that says nothing, doubts nothing, arouses nothing…will have difficulties in being nourished by this venue.
Guiding and supporting
Our residency programmes rely on three key words : time, trust and creative risk-taking given to the artist and his/her research. This leads to inventing a relationship of companionship with a venue and its team with the artist during all his project, from idea to production including intermediate steps. Mains d’Œuvres values the individual artist rather than specific pieces or projecst, that is why our programmes go beyond a single project. Our concern is to render resident artists annd companies profesionally and financially autonomous with a faithful audience upon leaving our venue.
In this world of uniformity, speed and cost-effectiveness Mains d’Œuvres will continue to give time to the artists-to-be and those already there; it is a place which gives itself the freedom and privilege to share and cherish the same dream with an artist in order to create together poetic intelligence and thus maybe change the world.
The artist-in residence programmes
There are 3 types of choreographic residency-programs :
I) project based (approx. 1 year) mainly conceived for young emerging choreographers. They are invited to work on a specific project. An individualised framework will be conceived for each of them depending on experience, profesional development and research plan in n order to meet their specific needs throughout the whole creative process (finacial, administrative, and artistic). II) Long-term residency (3 yrs. max.) is offered to companies who want to join their adventure to ours and who wish to nourish their research through this venue and the surrounding community. It is a specific framework which gives the time to explore new things differently and develop audacious new choregraphic forms III) Research (max. 3 weeks) This is a time given to artists who need to explore different materials or resolve thechnical questions with no result production whatsoever. It is the programme which allows the artist to take risks, make mistakes and start over.
How to apply : Please send a presentation of your project, your resume and a video of a previous work (if any) to Nicolas Chaussy. There is no deadline and we welcome applications throughout the year. However, artists and projects are chosen six months in advance. We will respond within 30 days. The entire application can be submitted via email or by regular postal mail.
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