Since 2010 and his debut as a choreographer, Sylvain Huc has made the body an infinite playground. Dance appears there as if by accident. Because, above all, it is the body that is at stake, the rules that are imposed on it are like violations that it allows. The moment of performance is a ritual that is always renewed to throw together bodies that are both dishevelled and delicate, wise and wild.
After graduating in History and Art History, completing an essay in political anthropology on “Female brutality, savagery and sexuality in ancient Greece”, his encounter with contemporary dance was sudden. He then joined the CDC Toulouse training programme in 2003. A few important encounters (Mark Tompkins, Gisèle Vienne and Lloyd Newson amongst others) would later fuel his artistic desires. After a career as a performer, he took over as director of the Divergences company in 2014. His first production, Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (Little Red Riding Hood), aimed at a young audience, was performed 250 times in France and in Europe. It laid the foundations of a peculiar choreographic approach focusing on the body, its states, its consistency as it closely interacts with sound and light. Rotkäppchen, Kapput and then Boys don’t cry followed. In 2018, he choreographed Sujets for the Montpellier Dance Festival, a decisive quintet and contemplation of raw as well as aesthetic nudity. His solo, Lex, was performed in Roubaix at the Grand Bain Festival in 2019. These latest projects also marked his collaboration with artist Fabrice Planquette, dancer Mathilde Olivares and choreographer Jan Martens. In addition to aikido, which he practices assiduously, Sylvain Huc nourishes his creative process with diverse influences such as experimental music, visual art, cinema and literature.
The Compagnie Sylvain Huc is supported by the network of National Centers for Choreographic Development, in particular by those in Toulouse (La Place de la danse), Roubaix (Le Gymnase), Avignon (Les Hivernales) and Uzès (La Maison). He has also been selected by the European network Aerowaves for the 2019 edition of the festival. Cie Sylvain Huc is accredited and subsidized by the French Ministry of Culture / DRAC Occitanie, by the Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée Regions. It will join a partnership with L'Escale - City of Tournefeuille in 2020. Sylvain Huc is also associate artist of Le Gymnase I CDCN Roubaix - Hauts-de-France Region for 2020-2022 and is partnered artist with la Place de la Danse - CDCN Toulouse/ Occitanie.
Artistique approach
On the uses of the body
I would like to develop an acute reflection on the body and its representations. Made up of relief and hollows, it offers itself or hides from the gaze. It is therefore with shrewdness that I carry out my investigations on the body as a subject, object and multitude of constructions (aesthetic, social, political, biological…). Subjected to a world order to which it must conform, but also made of its own fantasies and physical utopias, the body offers an infinite source of writing. At the crossroads of anthropological observation and formal abstraction, my research examines the power of the body and its irreducible nature.
Writing at the crossroads of forms
Having abandoned literally narrative forms, today I would like to explore the potential of narration. I like to summon the body, light, sound and set design, because it is from the links between these elements that writing emerges. My works are, in this sense, aesthetic, sensitive and perceptive as well as physical narrations. With them, I assert my desire to share (as opposed to “communicate”) an experience with the spectator. Liberating the writing from the “story” seems to me fundamental to awaken the viewer’s gaze.
Shared practices
My projects are also part of creative challenges and processes with different partners. They are about inventing new practices with people, structures, institutions and artists in different places. What the concept of mediation means to me is based on the same concerns. Because pedagogy is not so much transmission as the sharing of experiences around the body, I like to leave the distinction between mediation and creation undefined. I therefore see my process as a space for the confrontation of experiences.