The company


T.M. Project approaches dance by way of crosspollination between dance and other art disciplines, specifically music, installation, performance, and digital creation.

Thierry Micouin’s encounter with Pauline Boyer (sound artist, researcher, lecturer at ENSA-Nantes) in 2013, around the piece Double Jack, was crucial to the affirmation of this transversality and decompartmentalization.
 
Projects by T.M. Project vary in format and scope, and are designed to be presented on stage, but also in galleries, contemporary music venues, art centers, and the public space.
 
Participatory creations for young or adult audiences are at the heart of the company’s approach. Thierry Micouin regularly offers workshops for children, teenagers, adults, amateurs, and professionals, with whom he develops a sensitive and rigorous teaching method.
 
His teaching explores the fundamentals of contemporary dance, develops body awareness and each participant’s individual poetics, allowing them to be the authors of their own gestures through the experience of creation.

Partners

T.M. Project creations receive support from the Ministry of Culture: DRAC Bretagne, the Region of Brittany, the City of Rennes, and occasionally, as part of its touring framework, by Spectacle Vivant en Bretagne.

News 2023

• On tour: three perfomances in the repertoire

    Jour futur, created 2022
    Visages d’un Pays / Film, created 2021
         
    Eighteen, created 2019
        
    Faille, created 2018
 
• In development
 
        Lutte.s, solo version first play June 2023 / quintet version slated October 2024
         
        Sound installation: Bande passante July 2023
        
        Transmitting play: Faille to Jeune Ballet Aquitaine April 2023
 
• Numerous training and teaching initiatives

Upcoming: Lutte.s 2023-2024

Expanding their transdisciplinary approach, Thierry Micouin and Pauline Boyer reprise the experiment of transposing musical notation into choreographic writing, started with Jour futur.

In Lutte.s, they juxtapose the corporal vocabulary of traditional Breton style of wrestling, called Gouren, and bring it into dialogue with IN C, the founding work of the minimalist composer Terry Riley.

The idea is to use the Gouren practice area and at the same time draw inspiration from symbolic objects and colors that made a number of protests instantly recognizable: yellow vests, carnations, umbrellas, the colors orange, green, and saffron…

The transposition of the vocabulary of Gouren into choreography, and its performance to the pulsing rhythm of music, will thus be nourished by contemporary social struggles, and particularly those driven by women and ethnic or sexual minorities.

Research and rehearsals will culminate in two creations:

• A solo planned for the Spring of 2023. In the tradition of Gouren, this version will be presented outdoors or in non-dedicated spaces, in a circular staging area surfaced with material such as sawdust, flower mat, etc. It will be a space of convergence between dance and political action, with the dancer surrounded by the public.

• A quintet planned for the Fall of 2024, created for an end stage theatre. The dancers will also move in a circle. The quintet version will highlight the structure of the musical composition.

Creation schedule

In parallel to the research, meetings, and explorations, followed by rehearsals aimed at honing the performance with the help of five dancers, we are going to collaborate, specifically through practice workshops, with the wrestlers and with the inhabitants of the territories where Gouren is practiced. These sessions will in turn stimulate and refine our research.
We will work on creating a first solo with Julien Fouché, a dancer and Jiu Jitsu practitioner. This first version of the piece is designed for a public space. As a trial run before the quintet, the solo will allow us to fine-tune our research objectives, articulate the often-complex transposition of a sport practice to the stage, and to disseminate the piece outside dedicated theatre spaces.

Conception: Choreography Thierry Micouin / sound design: Pauline Boyer • Solo peformer: Julien Fouché • Quintet performers: Julien Fouché, Marie-Laure Caradec and 3 others (TBA) • Gouren Coach: Tiphaine Le Gall • Lighting: Alice Panziera • Costumes: Laure Mahéo • Technical and sound direction: Benjamin Furbacco

Production • T.M Project
Coproduction • CDCN preview – Dance on all floor levels, Rennes-Brest • Collectif FAIR-E / CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne • Carreau du Temple, Paris • Le Petit Écho de la Mode, Châtelaudren • Subsidized by • DRAC Bretagne • Région Bretagne • Ville de Rennes

From the repertoire: Jour Futur, created 2022

Thierry Micouin and Pauline Boyer for the first time turned for inspiration to an existing work: Future Days, the Krautrock group CAN’s fourth album, released in 1973. In that pivotal year, liberal monetary theories took hold, and a “new world” began, hypermobile and instant. This album, with its smoky softness, foreshadows the crises that are hitting us hard right now.
Micouin and Boyer’s reinterpretation of the album opens up a new acoustic territory. It builds a musical architecture, where, on a white surface gradually turned black, unfolds a repetitive, hypnotic dance, segmented and geometrical.
What have we done with those future days?

Conception: choreography: Thierry Micouin / sound design: Pauline Boyer • Performers: Marie-Laure Caradec, Steven Hervouet, Théo Le Bruman, Thierry Micouin • Artistic consultant: Pénélope Parrau, Dalila Khatir • Lighting: Alice Panziera • Costume design: Laure Mahéo • Costume creation: Isabelle Beaudouin • Technical and sound direction: Benjamin Furbacco

Production • T.M Project • Coproduction • Scènes du Golfe, Théâtres Vannes-Arradon, publicly funded space • Collectif FAIR-E / CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne • Le Triangle, cité de la danse, Rennes • CCN de Tours • Ménagerie de Verre, Paris • Maison de la Culture d’Amiens – pôle européen de création et de production • Subsidized by • DRAC Bretagne • Région Bretagne • Ville de Rennes

Teaser: Video
Short clip - Le Triangle: Video
Thierry Micouin Interview - Le Triangle, Rennes: Video

 

From the repertoire: Eighteen, created 2019

Eighteen evokes a father–daughter relationship based on the pair’s respective artistic and choreographic experiences. The piece revisits the career of a performer and choreographer and, by the same token, a swath of the contemporary French dance repertoire. Both dialogued and danced, the piece is built around quotes from works by Catherine Diverrès, Boris Charmatz, Olivier Dubois, and Thierry Micouin. It also includes archival images.
Combining beauty and simplicity, Eighteen reveals an exceptional, touching bond between a father and his daughter.
Pauline Boyer, once again entrusted with composing the music, has endeavored to translate the resurgence of memory into sound.

Conception: choreography: Thierry Micouin / sound design: Pauline Boyer • Performers: Ilana Micouin alternating with Eve Bouchelot / Thierry Micouin • Artistic consultants: Pénélope Parrau, Dalila Khatir • Lighting: Alice Panziera • Technical direction: Benjamin Furbacco • Sound control: Benjamin Furbacco alternating with Pierre Xucla • Lighting: Alice Panziera alternating with Mélissandre Halbert.

Production • T.M Project • Coproduction • Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans • Centre Chorégraphique National de Rennes et de Bretagne, Musée de la Danse • Centre Chorégraphique National de Roubaix, Ballet du Nord • Ménagerie de Verre, Paris • Residencies • CCNO • CCNRB • CCN Roubaix • Conservatoire Edgar Varèse Gennevilliers, Flux Laboratory – Genève, Ménagerie de Verre, Paris • Subsidized by • DRAC Bretagne • Région Bretagne • Ville de Rennes.

Teaser 5 min: Video
Video 17 min: Video

From the repertoire: Faille, created 2018

In this piece, Thierry Micouin and Pauline Boyer have reconstituted a play area by drawing a scenic perimeter. Playing on the presence and absence of bodies in the spectators’ field of vision, they foreground the surroundings, play with the depth of field from fixed points of view, and thus invite the audience to work on their pictorial gaze. Faille involves the creation of moving tableaus which give rise to multiple landscapes that surround us by dint of their representation. It accomplishes an on-site and in-sight “artialization”—a term coined by the philosopher Alain Roger to describe how artistic experience transforms our perception of the environment. Faille becomes a machine manufacturing landscapes based on living, moving pictures.

Faille was selected by the Département du Morbihan’s 2018 call for projects “Sensitive Bodies and Spaces.”

Conception: Choreography Thierry Micouin / sound design: Pauline Boyer • Performers: Marie-Laure Caradec and Thierry Micouin • Artistic consultant: Pénélope Parrau • Technical direction: Pierre Barbusse

Production • T.M Project • Coproduction • Département du Morbihan • Domaine de Kerguéhennec • L'Hermine, Scène de territoire pour la danse Golfe du Morbihan Vannes, Agglomération à Sarzeau • Pôle Culturel de Ploërmel Communauté • TRIO..S à Inzinzac-Lochrist Residency • Domaine de Kerguéhennec • Musée de la Danse CCNRB Rennes • Subsidized by • DRAC Bretagne • Région Bretagne • Ville de Rennes

Different performance sites: Video
Short teaser and educational event: Video 
Reportage 1 KUB: Video
Reportage 2 KUB: Video

In the press

Libération’s Top 10 Selection, October 1, 2021 “Faille” by Thierry Micouin, at Musée Cranavalet
A doctorate of medicine under his belt, Thierry Micouin became a choreographer and dancer. Long affiliated with Catherine Diverrès’s dance company, Micouin has also shared the stage with Boris Charmatz and Olivier Dubois, and, since 2014, has collaborated with the visual artist Pauline Boyer. The duo has now co-authored Faille, a project envisioned three years ago on the Gulf of Morbihan. Never short of inspiration (Men at Work, Go Slow, a solo and a video about escort boys, or the duet Eighteen, conceived with Micouin’s daughter), the soon-to-be sixty-year-old tackles this time “the live show outside places dedicated to performance.” Hence the idea of taking over the courtyard of the Musée Carnavalet […] with the figure of the Breton-born School-of-Paris painter Pierre Tal Coat in the backdrop, and, for good measure, a math pop quiz based on the Fibonacci sequence—it is common knowledge that it is made of integers equal to the sum of the preceding two numbers.

Ouest France, June 7, 2021
[…] The spectators were treated to a show highlighting the life of present-day farmers. The essential principle behind the choreography was the use of photographs and their manipulation. A perfectly orchestrated geometrical occupation of space was accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Pauline Boyer. Using farmers’ testimonies, the show foregrounded their concern about the preservation of diverse landscapes and the passing on of their knowledge to future generations. Difficult issues were also raised, such as suicide among farmers: “There is one thing no one can take away from us, and that is the pride in doing this job.”

Marie-Laure Barbaud, M La scène: Le Blog theatre, May 19, 2021
[…] Eighteen is not just a play about sharing knowledge, it is also a militant play. The dance and the text brought to the stage assert the freedom to be oneself and to denounce, in particular, the inanity of partisan bias when it comes to gender issues. What does it mean to be a girl? What does it mean to be a father when you are a homosexual? What is the image of each identity? Between clips of older choreographies projected on a screen and the same passages reenacted on stage with the energy of another body, the ensuing dialogue reshuffles the decks of time and identity. Ilana Micouin dances what her father had danced. The gesture is the same, the body different. The personal commitment to freedom and choice is identical. Of the father–daughter duet we will recall the passages danced by Thierry Micouin which illustrate the various stages in his personal history. Interpreting extracts from original choreographies or those by other creators, such as Catherine Diverrès, Boris Charmatz, or Olivier Dubois, this formidable dancer never fails to impress by his elegance, his pure, crisp lines, and his explosive energy.

Jérôme Provencal, Les Inrockuptibles, March 12, 2020
[…] Eighteen was particularly memorable. It is the latest piece by choreographer and dancer Thierry Micouin, who shares the stage with his twenty-year-old daughter Ilana, a dancer in her own right. Interweaving their career paths and their memories, and evoking their father–daughter relationship with beautifully distanced precision, they conjure up a lively, stimulating piece, at the confluence of dance and theater, which is further amplified by subtle insertions of video.

François Delétraz, Le Figaro.fr, May 4, 2019
[…] Thierry Micouin offers an astonishing choreography combining word and gesture. […] A superb testimony to French contemporary dance divided between the fury of motion and the bygone trend of “non-dance” […]. An autobiography in the form of a dialogue illustrated with archival images, it is a work about passing on skills and about intimacy.

Rosita Boisseau, Le Monde, April 3, 2019
[…] Family stories, choreographic teaching, the gift from art to life and vice versa, these pas de deux put intimacy back on stage with an unusual, new, sensitive partnership. Thierry and Ilana found their common ground between movement and text. Their dialogue, both lighthearted and profound, seems to be invented on the go, like at home, with points of choreographic acceleration that spur the rhythm. They dance together as they breathe.

Amélie Blaustein Niddam, Toute la Culture, April 2019
[…] Eighteen stages a hybrid story, where the relationship between Thierry and Ilana intersects history, one where, at a time of homophobic upsurge, having a gay dad is considered criminal; but also, and essentially, the history of dance […]. The piece talks about work: what is a choreographic phrase? […] [T]here is a real declaration of love to the profession of dance. There is also a testimony to a possible serene adult relationship between a father and his daughter.

Venues

IN THE BRITANNY REGION
 
Arradon Les Scènes du Golfe SC
Baud,
Maison de la musique Festival Nomadanse
Bignan Centre d’Art contemporain Kerguéhennec

Brest La Maison du Théâtre

Brest La Carène

Brest Le Quartz SN

Brest Mac Orlan

Cesson-Sévigné Ponts des Arts

Châtelaudren Le Petit Echo de la Mode ST

Fouesnant, L’Archipel

Gourin Domaine Tronjoly

Guingamp Théâtre Champ au Roy

Guingamp Festival Mil Lieux
Inzinzac Le Trio.s

Lanrivain Festival Lieux Mouvants

Ploërmel Les Beaux de Caulnes

Plougasnou Festival Ice.

Pontivy Conservatoire

Pordic La Ville Robert

Rennes CCNRB
Rennes Festival Nomadanse

Rennes La Criée Centre d’Art Contemporain

Rennes Le Triangle SC / Festival Waterproof
Rennes L’Ubu
Rennes Musée des Beaux Arts

Rennes Théâtre National de Bretagne

Saint Aignan Festival Nomadanse

Sarzeau l’Hermine Sarzeau ST

Saint-Armel, commune
Saint-Brieuc La Passerelle SN


 
NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL
 
Amiens Maison de la Culture SN

Bagnolet Théâtre Le Colombier

Caen CCN Festival Avis de Grand Frais

Caen CCN Festival Interstices

Château Gontier Théâtre SN

Conches en Ouche Pôle Culturel

Douvres La Délivrande Le Cube

Ernée la 3E

Falaise CDCN
Gennevilliers Conservatoire E.Varèse

Haute-Goulaine Le Quatrain

Issy les Moulineaux Le Cube

Marseille, Klap, maison de la danse
Nanterre Les Amandiers CDN

Nantes Le Lieu Unique SN

Orléans Le Théâtre SN

Paris Centre Pompidou

Paris Étoile du Nord Festival les Turbulents

Paris Carreau du Temple

Paris Le Monfort

Paris Ménagerie de Verre

Paris Musée Carnavalet Festival Nuit Blanche

Pézenas Théâtre

Reims Le Manège SN

Roubaix Festival Jouvence

Roubaix CCN

Rouen L’étincelle

Saint Barthélémy d’Anjou le THV

Thouarce Villages en scènes

Toulon Le Liberté SN

Vanves Festival Artdanthé
Erfurt (DE) Tanztheater

New York (USA) La Mama Parsons

Vannes Les Scènes du Golfe SC


 

TM Project

TM PROJECT

3 Place du Parlement
35000 Rennes

+33 (0)9 71 55 18 40
+33 (0)6 09 08 04 08

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