Power Moves – Restage

February 24, 2025

In urban dance, Power Moves are movements that are used in so-called battles to impress competitors and audiences alike. They are much more than just technique: they embody self-empowerment, arise from the power of expression and give the dancers a strong presence.

In this way, the dancers develop their own creativity, naturally include questions about the physical expression of gender in their performances, mix different styles such as street dance with vogueing and thus create a fascinating movement language.

The contemporary dance production combines these Power Moves into a full-length choreography and – with the title alone – incidentally builds a bridge to current events in which the representation of power and movement takes on a new relevance.

DIGILAND

August 28, 2024

Under the direction of the Fabien Prioville Dance Company, this unique dance performance was created in partnership with Tanzhaus NRW, the Mixed Reality & Visualization Lab (MIREVI) of Hochschule Düsseldorf. The performance seamlessly blends contemporary dance, performance art, and digital media.

From the very beginning, the students were actively involved in the entire creative process and were given the opportunity to contribute their own themes and questions to the project.

They were free to decide how they wanted to participate in the performance – whether as performers, mixed reality technicians, costume designers, or lighting technicians.

DIGILAND is a groundbreaking initiative that fosters the artistic development of the participants and bridges traditional forms of expression with digital media to present an innovative mixed reality performance.

Premiere: 28. & 29. November 2024 at tanzhaus nrw.

Dancing Audience

November 2, 2023

The Fabien Prioville Dance Company in collaboration with En-Knap Group takes the audience on a captivating experience of VR films while contributing to a simultaneous live performances.As the audeince puts on their VR glasses and explores the virtual realm, live dancers respond and interact with their movements, creating a dynamic and reciprocal dance experience.

Who’s dancing? 
Who’s watching? 
Which watchers are dancing? 
Which dancers are watching?
Who dances and who watches?

Immersion into virtual space with head-mounted displays enables the gaze of the virtual, recorded choreography, but it also disables the gaze of the physical space, while opening up the virtual gaze of the mind and body into spontaneous, physical choreography in the space. The interactivity between virtual dancers and physical watchers with head-mounted displays binds with the interactivity between physical dancers and physical watchers without head-mounted displays. By way of interactivity and immersion, a spontaneous, physical choreography emerges out of the virtual, recorded choreography, in fact, a hybrid or synthesis of both, blurring the line dancer-watcher.

Premiere: September 27th 2023 at Španski borci Cultural centre, Ljubljana

German premiere: January 12th & 13th 2024 at tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf during TEMPS D’IMAGES Festival

FPDC Christmas

February 13, 2023

2Sides

November 22, 2022

2Sides builds on the insights gained in the course of the Corona pandemic regarding liveness in the performing arts and focuses significantly on streaming formats and behaviors that go beyond a mere functional analysis of already known platforms such as Zoom and YouTube. Rather, 2Sides is an experimental setup that creates a kind of space within a space, connecting and colliding both worlds – physical audience/performance and digital equivalent. The play with expectations of both the performers and the audience is crucial in this performance.

Four performers meet in a black box interacting with each other in front of an audience. At the same time they are filming themselves constantly, uploading content to a website specially programmed for this project and go live on Tik Tok and Instagram.

At home there is another audience that sits in front of their screen, observes the same dancers interacting with each other but experiences a different kind of performance. The website allows the user to customize their perspective on the show so that the online viewer always has the possibility to decide for a certain perspective / extract of the show.

Everybody watches the same show but do they really have the same or at least a comparable perspective?

2Sides was performed from January 12th-14th at tanzhaus nrw.

12Fitfy Mb/s

August 8, 2021

“12Fifty Mb/s” is about the artistic examination of the topic “Big Data”.  In this interactive performance the processes of Data collection and Data privacy are being investigated.

In “12Fifty Mb/s” four international dancers search for the pillars and limits of Big Data and also address the question of how resistance can be made in the context of Big Data despite the permanent collection of data.

For the experience of the performance, a special app was developed in collaboration with the MIREVI team from the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf. The audience will be provided with a smartphone and the developed app. The dancers’ movements and the choreography function as raw data, which is sent to the audience’s smartphones to be converted into information. The choreography is build around three layers of technology such as Motion Capture, QR Codes and NFC Tags, each with their own personal approach and interactivity.

Contemporary dance is used to make the digital network process and the process of data collection tangible.

Premiere: November 25th – 27th, 2021 at tanzhaus nrw

Guest Performances:
27th June at International Summer Dance Festival, Yerewan, Armenia
19th August 2022 at tanz.tausch festival, Cologne
2nd September 2022 showing at tanzmesse, Düsseldorf
16th September 2022 at Favoriten Festival, Dortmund
15th September 2023 at FORUM Leverkusen
7th February 2024 at Španski borci, Ljubljana

Alpha

January 26, 2021

Alpha, conceived and produced by Fabien Prioville Dance Company, sends visitors on a gaming parcour. The performance installation is an experimental arrangement that deliberately leaves room for the element of chance in order to offer the audience the opportunity to independently explore the museum / performative space.

The focus is now no longer on the fundamental exploration of possible uses of smartphones in a performative context, but rather on the exploration of new habits on the one hand and the development of collective concepts of use on the other.

Developed together with the team of LavaLabs and the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf, Alpha starts as a freely downloadable app that successively turns the visitors’ private smartphone into a kind of natural extension of the body.

The app invites visitors to playfully explore the exhibition, while they are asked to collect parts of a code using their private smartphones in order to gain access to an additional room at the end, where a “performative reward” awaits.

The installation was visible in the frame of the exhibition ‘Welcome to Paradise‘ in NRW-Forum Düsseldorf from August 27th 2021 till January 9th 2022.

Click here to go to the website of the exhibition.

ZOOMOLOGISTS

November 24, 2020

The ZOOMOLOGISTS is a multi-perspective research on the digital multiplication up to the dissolution of the performative body. Five professional and internationally established dancers expand the classical viewer’s perspective via zoom to include their private surroundings, which becomes the new stage for their individual performances. Playing with several cameras takes on an important position, as the dancers consciously work with an almost voyeuristic penetration of a foreign space. The performers thus implement several cameras in their environment, which can be controlled at different times. Each perspective can be displayed in a separate window in the zoom view, so that the impression is quickly created that one is observing parts of the performance from the perspective of a surveillance camera.

« The ZOOMOLOGISTS » was conceived out of the pandemic. Being a Zoom based project, created and performed via the Zoom Application. Its entire design is scaled and crafted for the web, and looks to create a 100% digital experience of dance. « The Zoomologists » are products of a society in crises, locked at home, battling its way out of a foreign virus, and paradoxically, so much creativity has managed to find its way to our homes and screens »

« The ZOOMOLOGISTS » was presented as a try-out in a live-streaming on YouTube. Afterwards Fabien Prioville Dance Company invited the audience to a talk on Zoom to exchange about the experience.

 

VR Dance Film Installations

April 24, 2020

With “Rendez-Vous” and “Here we are” the Fabien Prioville Dance Company looks at an entirely new genre for contemporary dance. In cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institut FIT St Augustin, Fabien Prioville challenges the traditional theatre space, perspectives and viewing habits of the audience.

Off the stage and into virtual reality, the company developed a new concept for the viewing of contemporary dance that can travel to any city, country or continent. Fabien Prioville’s choreography is performed and recorded by a 360°-camera in public spaces. The recorded videos will be presented to the audience at the locations through VR-glasses. VR-technology offers the audience a unique perspective on contemporary dance, and a new method of perception. It challenges the common experience of a live performance, plays with the senses of the audience and offers unknown potential for the experience of dance for choreographers, dancers and audience.

 

Dates:

31. August 2018
International tanzmesse nrw, Düsseldorf (Germany)

13. – 23. September 2018
La Biennale de la danse, Lyon (France)

8. November 2018
14. Kongress der Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft, Düsseldorf (Germany)

22. – 25. November 2018
Next Level – Festival for Games, Dortmund (Germany)

3. & 4. May 2019
Underground IV Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Wuppertal (Germany)

26. May 2019
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Wuppertal (Germany)

13. – 17. August 2019
Open Look International Dance Festival, St. Petersburg (Russia)

24. July 2020
Moovy Tanzfilm Festival, Cologne (Germany)

16. October – 15. November 2020
Tokyo (Japan)

3. – 19. February 2022
Holland Dance Festival, The Hague (Netherlands)

6. – 8. May 2022
Under Construction Festival, Wuppertal (Germany

Rendez-Vous

December 5, 2019

After “The Smartphone Project” the Fabien Prioville Dance Company turns to a new genre with “Rendez-Vous”. In collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute FIT St Augustin, Fabien Prioville explores the challenges of the latest VR technology and the associated possibilities for contemporary dance. Away from the stage, into virtual reality, a video-dance installation is being developed, which is not only recorded in public space but also experienced by the audience. The classic, narrative theater space will be expanded in two ways. Not only are the recordings of choreography in public space, in Düsseldorf, for example, in a café (NOOIJ Café, tanzhaus nrw) and a park (Ehrenhof) instead, but also the installation will only be shown at the respective recording locations for spectators. The choreography by Fabien Prioville is recorded on site by a 360° camera. The resulting film becomes visible to the viewer as a virtual reality with VR glasses and can be played as often as required and without technical support for the audience. With the new technological possibilities, the viewer experience goes beyond the conventional, two-dimensional recording and offers a real alternative to reality – just the virtual reality. The accustomed viewing experience of the viewer is challenged and the VR glasses offer a new perspective of experiencing and participating in contemporary dance. The installation is a play with the senses, for although the location of the virtual performance is the same as the physical of the viewer, through the VR technology it enters a new perception of space and dance.

The project deals not only physically, but also virtually with the reception of contemporary dance. The proximity to the dancer body is made tangible in a way never before known. Interfaces and boundaries between theater, dance, space, the public, movement and perception are expanded and challenged by the new aspect of virtual reality.

The tension between physical live experience and media-produced, virtual reality offers choreographers, dancers and spectators a challenge and unknown potential for a new way of perceiving dance.

Dates:

31. August 2018
Tanzmesse NRW, Düsseldorf (Germany)

17. – 20. January 2019
Temps d’images Festival, Düsseldorf (Germany)

3. May 2019
Opernhaus Wuppertal in Co-Production with Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Wuppertal (Germany)

14. – 17. November 2019
Athens Digital Arts Festival (Co-Production with tanzhaus nrw), Athens (Greece)