Moving Forward: Laëtitia Daché highlights female choreographers

©_Michaël_Guichard - Laëtitia Daché

The event will take place from March 26 to April 1, 2025 Moving forward, dedicated to contemporary choreographic creation and women choreographers. On the program: exceptional performances by emerging and established women choreographers, highlighting a diversity of aesthetics and personalities. An event organized by the CONTRA company, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and the City of Paris (find all the information on the event here).
On this occasion we met Laëtitia Daché, choreographer, dancer, director of CONTRA and author ofin the distance, a triptych of short choreographic films awarded at numerous international festivals.

French Touch: What led you to become a choreographer?

Laëtitia Daché: I have been choreographing since I was very young, it's the Music courses which has always greatly inspired and guided me towards writing movement. I founded the CONTRA company in reference to the contrapuntal aspect of movement (the art of creating independent melodic lines that intertwine harmoniously, like counterpoint in music, editor's note), among other elements. I also wanted to tackle the complexity of human emotions, which I wanted to depict through movement. It's a real dive into the unknown without any certainty of finding an answer, but that's also what is dizzying and exciting about choreographing.

FT: What inspires you to create a choreography?

LD: My last piece, In the Distance, a choreographic triptych in the form of short films, was largely inspired by composers and music authors. Like the pianist Jean-Philippe Riopy, whom I discovered at a concert. It was obvious that one of his pieces of music was made for part of the piece, which I was starting to have in mind.
Fashion designers also inspire me. I love seeing the movement of a garment, its weight, its drape, its texture.
More recently, I've become interested in light. I'm fascinated by the light work of fashion photographer Paolo Roversi. I've also re-immersed myself in the work of Caravaggio. After Moving forward, deepening my research around light could become a priority.

FT: Do you feel that your choreography has evolved over the years?

LD: Since my career as a choreographer is still relatively new, I would say that the material in my choreographies is likely to evolve more than it has already. This is especially true as I want to confront the unknown and explore beyond a certain comfort zone. For example, by discovering new choreographic materials, experimenting with new ways of moving or designing a piece, and understanding what these materials can provoke.
In the case of'In the Distance, there is a form of evolution between the writing of the first part and those that follow. A continuous energy was at the heart of the first, the second and the third confronted me with more concentrated, more internal energies.
However, I feel that certain elements come back naturally, without me paying particular attention to them. There is always something in my choreographic vocabulary that relates to fluidity, to the liquid character of movement.

FT: Do you have a particular ritual or routine for starting a new choreography?

LD: What interests me is the complexity of sensations, emotions, and experiences that we go through throughout our lives and their interconnections. From this come sensations, concepts, and images, linked to an overall theme. This can be a starting point, but it is not necessarily marked in time because these sets of ideas, crystallized by note-taking, are built over a very long time.
When I work on a given piece, I start by taking a group of ideas that I want to develop. I spend a little more time on it, I add other images, inspirations, readings… and music, identified before or after. It is the music that will crystallize the movement that will take shape in the studio. It has a central place in the creative process.

FT: Does technology have an impact on your creative process?

LD: I'm not really attracted to the use of theartificial intelligence in the process of creating movement or music. On the other hand, there is another area in which the use of technology would interest me a lot, that of scenography. For my next piece, I am considering a large element of light via projection or screen. In this respect, AI tools could refine the scenographic composition, or allow the integration of digital elements or images into the scenography, but I haven't really looked into it yet.

FT: Moving forward aims to highlight female dancers and choreographers. What challenges have you faced in your recent career?

LD: The dance sector is both very dynamic and experiencing a kind of fragility. Around me, I have seen artists who have given up, and many others who have considered it because of the difficulty of structuring a company or emerging in the broadest sense. A young company must manage creation, artists, technique, administration, dissemination, communication… It's a lot of things for sometimes few resources or reduced teams. I wanted to think about what we could do to support the dance sector and especially its stakeholders, especially choreographers at the beginning or in the middle of their careers. This is where the desire to create a space for support, awareness of art and choreographic creation, and exchange between professionals and the public came from, while bringing together several aesthetics.
Through discussions with colleagues, and through my experience as both a dancer and a choreographer, I realized that there were additional issues related to women choreographers. And even if I don't feel particularly activist, I felt it was interesting and necessary to create a space to address these issues.
On the way to creating the event I also read thestudy of the Association of National Choreographic Centers (ACCN) released in 2023, linked to their gender equality project started in 2021. This formalized findings and put figures to intuitions. Like the fact that there is a majority of women in the dance sector, but more men in management, structural, and programming positions. I was able to contact people who had participated and Moving forward was also built with the support of this study, confirming what I had already imagined for the event.

FT: What advice would you give to young dancers and choreographers who are starting out in this field?

LD: Stay open to anything that can inspire, which can vary from one person to another. Continue to nourish yourself and maintain the posture of a learner. This is quite natural for people who consider themselves artists, but keeping these moments and giving them a form of priority can be quite important. And maintaining rigor and a willingness to work, but dancers generally already have that, because the profession requires it.