François Chaignaud, Aymeric Hainaux

Choreographer François Chaignaud and beatboxer Aymeric Hainaux weave a physical and musical alchemy in which sound, voice and rhythm intertwine with performative intensity. Fracas × 7 is the continuation of Mirlitons, in its exploration of a unique body and sound-based language.

Nina Laisné and François Chaignaud invite us on a journey into the heart of the art of romance, in the company of a multi-faceted Orlando. Using this musical material and the stories that run through it it as a starting point, they give shape to a piece which intertwines eras and dances. It is a magic lantern in which the androgynous figures of San Miguel and Doncella Guerrera parade before us.

The encounter between the Japanese butoh dancer Akaji Maro, master of the strange and the absurd, and the multi-faceted singer and choreographer François Chaignaud turns their duet at the frontiers of different genres into a pagan ritual, a celebration of bodies in all their states. GOLD SHOWER, a mirrored portrait of two unclassifiable figures, transcends differences in which the joy of disruption is played out to the full. 

Following on from Romances inciertos, another Orlando, Nina Laisné and François Chaignaud extend their utopic fusion of dance and music based on South American repertoires. In the company of the Argentinian singer Nadia Larcher, they compose a cosmogonic universe in which voices resonate with the breathy sound of the sackbut and zapateo rhythms. 

The outrageous challenge taken up by Marie-Pierre Brébant and François Chaignaud is to perform the complete musical works of Hildegard von Bingen. Like two figures from another era, they invite us to a take a plunge – both vocally and physically. Within this corpus, each note, each movement opens up access to new perception-based worlds.

With their bodies vacuum-packed into black latex bags borrowed from the world of S&M, the sylphs evoke, by turns, recumbent figures set in stone, cocoons made of some kind of dark-coloured matter or body bags. What unfurls in this piece piece is a perception-based enigma, which deftly slips from ancient statuary into Body Art. This Portrait brings Sylphides back to life, the first mythical piece co-signed by Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud in 2009, performed here in a choral and immersive version.

"Tumer", in Old French, means to dance, stir, or fall backwards. In the company of a collective of singing, dancing, and constantly transforming tumerels, Geoffroy Jourdain and François Chaignaud have concocted a mischievous review. Moving between different eras and genres, from polyphonic singing to variety, it brings this Portrait, and indeed the 2025 edition of the Festival d'Automne, to a close.

Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues returns with Borda, a new piece that marks and celebrates the 35th anniversary of the Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças, a company that set up its home in the Maré favela in Rio de Janeiro in 2004. 

Choreographer Dorothée Munyaneza’s piece Version(s) draws up an encounter between men, in which the poet and boxer Christian Nka, accompanied by musician Ben LaMar Gay looks into his career and ambivalent relationship with violence. Combining dance, text and live music, she puts together a hybrid space, which is both portrait and celebration.

Faustin Linyekula, a central figure on the Congolese artistic scene joins forces with composer and filmmaker Franck Moka in order to continue artistic creation in a country in the grip of chaos. Drawing upon live music and cinema, Profanations is an urgent show. It pits poetry against destruction, and life-giving energy against the powers of death. 

Alone on stage, Maria Hassabi stands very close to its edge, in a theatre space that condenses the audience’s attention on bodies. With a slowness verging on immobility, the artist embodies a succession of images, ranging from the iconic to those of a more diffuse kind. In doing so, she presents herself in full view, in all her strength and vulnerability.

After immersing herself in the forests with Αγρίμι (Fauve), choreographer Lenio Kaklea now lifts her eyes towards the sky, thereby continuing the ecological focus that has characterised her writing since 2022. But Les oiseaux (The Birds) does not idealize these air-born beings in any way. Instead, the septet accompanied by a non-living bird inivtes us to cast our eyes beyond our overly human gaze.

The brief, infinitive the title of this latest piece by Rachid Ouramdane, co-director of the Centre choréographique national de Grenoble, gives us an idea of the project’s guiding sense of purity and sparseness. We are presented with a white stage set, cast shadows, and two dancers, Lora Juodkaite and Annie Hanauer. On it, the two dancers create a torsion which is as physical as it is perceptive of their image - simultaneously offsetting the course of the movement and the way it is seen.