It is with a desire to put as many children and teenagers as possible in contact with contemporary dance that Simon Ampleman, dancer, choreographer and artistic director of the company Ample Man Danse, has been traveling the roads of Quebec for several years now. to provide school-based interventions. Starting May 11, in a series of workshops and shows, young people aged 3 to 17 will be able to discover the possibilities associated with dance.
Putting young people in contact with the discipline, so that they can appropriate it, is part of the workshop and performance project led by Ampleman in collaboration with the organization Danse sur les routes du Québec (DSR) and Réseau Centre. “We are really in an angle of discovery. We don’t come to give technical classes. We are here to introduce them to the medium of dance, of movement. The goal is really to […] to taste [aux jeunes] the dance experience”, explains the choreographer on the phone.
Indeed, the tour is above all an initiation to this art of movement, but also a way to feel the discipline. To do this, Simon Ampleman and his team have opted for an interactive way of doing things presented from two angles: the workshops that stimulate participation, give the public the opportunity to meet the artists, and the interactive show Public Piano, which puts children and teenagers in contact with creation. “Young people don’t just sit and watch the show, we’ve prepared them [pendant l’atelier] to be part of the show, in their own way,” adds Ampleman. They will, for example, have to translate into movement a word launched by the choreographer or decide on the way (Chopin, action film, horror film, etc.) in which a melody proposed by the pianist will be played. “The young people thus become choreographers of the first sequence of the show. […] It’s improvisation and that’s what makes it possible to create this interactivity. I think the show is important because it’s also a strong tool. Marking for the young. He lived a moment of improvisation in the workshop and he realizes what it can give when pushed further. And there, there is a magic that operates, ”says Simon Ampleman enthusiastically.
To each his own momentum
While 3-year-olds, as well as 16- and 17-year-old teenagers and primary school children, are invited to live this interactive experience, their way of juggling with movement is very different. ” […] The three-year-old child falls into magic, exploration, discovery, into play. The young primary school student, active, full of questions, is in the process of making the bridge between this magical side and the side of today’s reality […] and then we enter adolescence, where there is the whole relationship to the body. You can often hide — maybe that’s not the right term — behind a musical instrument, a text, a costume, but it’s more difficult to hide behind your body. So, using dance as a means of taming ourselves and discovering all the creative possibilities that are hidden within us eventually allows us to appreciate and love it,” says the choreographer.
In order to touch everyone in their development, to respect each stage, the workshops are thus built from very varied themes sometimes proposed by the children. No choreography is prepared in advance and Ampleman never imposes his way of dancing on his audience. “For toddlers, we often talk about the theme of nature, colors, animals. In the CPE, at the moment, they are preparing cocoons, chrysalises to make the butterflies appear […] We are going to take up this story again, we are going to become the caterpillar, the cocoon, we are going to open our wings and we are going to discover the universe […] »
Young people don’t just sit and watch the show, we prepared them [pendant l’atelier] to be part of the show, in their own way
For elementary school children, sport, bullying, listening to others are subjects that serve as a starting point for choreographic movements. While in high school, Ampleman points out that adolescents come up with themes related to, for example, everyday life, anxiety, environment, identity, etc. “But the important thing for me is to start from them. From the moment we have a theme, we have intervention strategies that allow us in groups, in sub-groups, to develop it. »
And if toddlers have this natural facility to move, to squirm, to turn, it is sometimes otherwise with adolescents and pre-adolescents, who are more stuck in their bodies. Thus, beyond this desire to introduce young people to dance, there is in Simon Ampleman a hope of allowing them, through the workshops, to realize their potential. “Sometimes, in secondary or primary, they [les jeunes] say, “I can’t dance, I’m stiff as a barbell, I have no coordination, I’m not good with rhythm. “We try to undo all that. It doesn’t happen with toddlers, but the older we get, the more we have this blockage. Not everyone, but it happens and I would like them to realize all the possibilities they carry within them and which can be transmitted through movement”, concludes Simon Ampleman with conviction and sensitivity.