VANAVARA 2016/2017

2016 Graduation show

Director
Gaëtan Levêque / Collectif AOC

Creation at the Cnac
December 2016

in Châlons-en-Champagne circus

There are fifteen of them and they write a new page. They free themselves from the past, open other doors.

"The creation of the Centre national des arts du cirque show is a poignant challenge, as much for the AOC collective as for the students.  It is the culmination of three years of training and, on top of that, it is the point of entry into professional life.
This was the case for us, more than 15 years ago, and a remarkable memory of a new life beginning.
This is why it is important to us to give everyone a means of expression, to share our experience of creation but also to guide everyone towards a specific research which has shaped the artistic identity of the AOC.
There are multiple constraints with a graduation show, but we are convinced that they also form resources to exploit, a playground.

After 16 years of joint management within the AOC collective, this request is a wonderful occasion for us to once more question the relationship between the individual and the collective, to challenge ourselves, and to guide this group in what it means to be on the circus stage.
We imagined a space, a sleepy place that holds numerous stories.  It carries the remains of another time and awaits its awakening.
Them, there are fifteen of them and they write a new page. They free themselves from the past, open other doors.
It is by what is revealed despite themselves in their approach to circus, by their sensitive relationship to their apparatus and by a circus gesture devoid of artifice that they will mark the contrast.
The contrast that will be equally present in the materials used on stage (stone, wood, sand, iron) as a duality between ancestral wisdom and sensitive, spirited youth."

The graduation show

Each year, for three months between September and December, the Cnac graduating class works under the supervision of a well-known director, who must integrate their apparatus and their artistic proposals into a show. The students are thus put in the position of creative performers overseen by a professional artistic and technical team, in conditions close to those of their future reality.
This year, the Cnac entrusted the creation of the graduation show to the AOC collective, with directing falling to Gaëtan Levêque.