Sylvain Huc and Mathilde Olivares: La Vie nouvelle (2025)
Friday, 21 November at 8:00 p.m.
dance performance, festival opening
Kino Šiška, Katedrala
Duration: 53 min.
Dancer and choreographer Sylvain Huc has presented work at CoFestival twice before; first with Thiago Granato in the duet Lost Particles (2023), and last year with the performance Sujets (2018). The dance duet New Life (La Vie nouvelle), created together with dancer Mathilde Olivares, is not a meeting of two artistic biographies, identities, or territories. The dancer and choreographer state that they follow what their encounter produces at its origin: a form, a language, a profane secret of movement. Their dance duet is an understanding of this encounter without the weight of advocacy that usually accompanies project subsidy application forms.
New Life is a kind of condition for a dance duet or artistic collaboration. It strives to justify nothing other than the fundamental appetite for shared artistic work. It aims to create conditions in which mutual dance would be capable of seeing itself. In the contemporary production system, and especially in contemporary dance, one of the fundamental ideological whirlpools is the degree of continuous advocacy for one’s own reasons for working: the permission that must be obtained at the Master’s programme audition, explaining and justifying the work, which is not related to the developmental aspects of one’s own artistic creation, but is largely determined by guessing what kind of argumentation will fulfil the Master’s programme (systemic, funder’s, etc.) expectations. New Life is a kind of dance proto-duet. It focuses on the visibility of the partner’s body and the creative person, on artistic friendship, on the joy of working together, and ensures the conditions for this to even be possible. This is why it is so fundamentally human. It must be explained that explanations for why we enjoy being together are not always necessary. New Life is a dance form of permission for collaboration without conceptual justification, open to what will happen.
Concept, choreography, performance: Sylvain Huc and Mathilde Olivares
Sound design and artistic advisor: Fabrice Planquette
Lighting design: Jan Fedinger
Artistic advisor: Théo Aucremanne
Assistant and artistic advisor: Juliana Béjaud
Mentoring: Daniel Larrieu
Lighting and stage management: Manfred Armand
Sound engineering: Bernard Levejac
Costumes: Lucie Patarozzi
Graphic design, photos: Loran Chourrau
Co-producers: Montpellier Danse 2025, creative residency at L’Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse, Ville de Tournefeuille, Scène de Bayssan, Espaces Pluriels – Scène conventionnée (Pau), Théâtre de la Vignette (Montpellier), Théâtre Molière Sète Scène Nationale Archipel de Thau, CCN Ballet – Malandain Ballet Biarritz, La Place de la Danse – CDCN Toulouse Occitanie, Danse Occitanie Network, l’Estive – scène nationale de Foix et de l’Ariège with the ZZZ company.
Support: Théâtre de la Digue – Cie 111.
With the support of CENTQUATRE – PARIS
Patrons: Tranquilisafe and Librairie Ombres Blanches (Toulouse)
This project is supported by the Occitanie Region’s creative arts grant programme.
The Sylvain Huc company is supported by the network of National Choreographic Development Centres, in particular those in Toulouse (La Place de la Danse), Roubaix (Le Gymnase), Avignon (Les Hivernales), and Uzès (La Maison). Sylvain Huc was also selected by the European network Aerowaves for the 2019 edition of the festival. The Sylvain Huc company is subsidized by the Ministry of Culture / DRAC Occitanie. It has been associated with the city of Tournefeuille since January 2020. Sylvain Huc was also an associate artist at Le Gymnase I CDCN in Roubaix for the period 2020-2023, and a collaborating artist at La Place de la Danse – CDCN Toulouse/Occitanie.
Organised by: Kino Šiška and NDA Slovenia
Cover photo: Loran Chourrau