Élodie Beaudet

Cho­reo­gra­pher – Dan­cer – Musi­cian

It was whil­st playing the drums with her musi­cian father that she began to grasp the concept of rhythm at around the age of six. In 1995, she dis­co­ve­red West Afri­can dance during an exchange with the Wam­dé troupe from Bur­ki­na Faso.

 

From 2001 onwards, she took part in work­shops on Gui­nean, Malian, tra­di­tio­nal Man­din­ka and contem­po­ra­ry Afri­can dance with dan­cers and cho­reo­gra­phers such as Sey­dou Boro, Nor­ma Claire, Richard Aneg­bele, Eve­lyne Mam­bo and Mer­lin Nya­kam… She under­took two trips las­ting seve­ral months to Sene­gal and The Gam­bia in 2005 and 2007, where she trai­ned in dance and dum-dum drum­ming with the Waki­li troupe and the cho­reo­gra­pher Apaye Son­go. At the same time, she took part in crea­tive pro­jects com­bi­ning dance, song and per­cus­sion, such as the Was­sa troupe with Ivo­rian artists.

From 2010 onwards, she began to deve­lop her pro­fes­sio­nal career, alter­na­ting bet­ween dance-per­cus­sion pro­jects and tea­ching, whil­st see­king to deve­lop her own cho­reo­gra­phic lan­guage, hea­vi­ly influen­ced by the rhyth­mic approach and the release of ener­gy found in Afri­can dance.

In 2011, she com­ple­ted the CEFEDEM Bre­tagne / Pays de la Loire trai­ning course (ear­ly child­hood deve­lop­ment and joint intro­duc­tion to dance and music) and the pro­fes­sio­nal trai­ning course (Afro-contem­po­ra­ry dance) with Anti­podes Paris and the cho­reo­gra­pher Nor­ma Claire. She joi­ned the cast of the show “Afro-breizh” – Cie Dou­nia by Fati­ma Legz­hal – and the Fran­co-Ivo­rian troupe “Ayé­na”, led by the Ivo­rian per­cus­sio­nist Baba Tou­ré (tra­di­tio­nal reper­toire of Côte d’Ivoire).

At the same time, she began her career as a bas­sist with the groups “Shan­doo” (folk) and “La robe verte” (Afro-folk). In 2014, she joi­ned the group “Téri­kan” (Man­dingue Afro-funk fusion) with the Gui­nean sin­gers Ami­na­ta Mengue and Cama­ra.

She joi­ned the Engre­nages com­pa­ny in 2016 and co-cho­reo­gra­phed the show “Fluide com­plexe” with hip-hop dan­cer Franck Gui­zonne, alias Fran­co, which pre­mie­red in 2017. In 2018, they crea­ted “Groove time”, an inter­ac­tive show (Afro­beat-funk). In 2019, work began on the cho­reo­gra­phic piece “Com­mu­nau­té”, which pre­mie­red in 2021 as a show for five dan­cers with a back­ground in hip-hop. In 2020, the “Groove Time” pro­ject evol­ved into an orches­tral ver­sion, “Kinyon­ga”, brin­ging toge­ther nine artists for a dance concert fea­tu­ring a reper­toire of Afro-groove musi­cal com­po­si­tions. 2020 also mar­ked a new col­la­bo­ra­tion with Cie Dou­nia on the “XY” pro­ject. In 2021, she joi­ned sin­ger-song­wri­ter Stel­lis Groseil’s “Nio­moye” (jazz-world) pro­ject as a bas­sist. In 2022, Elo­die began wri­ting a video-dance pro­ject connec­ting a city’s archi­tec­tu­ral heri­tage to its intan­gible heri­tage and to a contem­po­ra­ry cho­reo­gra­phic and musi­cal aes­the­tic. In 2024, she joi­ned the CND’s cho­reo­gra­pher trai­ning pro­gramme “Spe­cial Edi­tion #8” under Mathilde Mon­nier and Sté­phane Bou­quet. She also cho­reo­gra­phed a per­for­mance with the jazz quin­tet Opsid and direc­ted a short cho­reo­gra­phic film as part of the EAC pro­jects run by the Ille-et-Vilaine depart­ment, along­side saxo­pho­nist Zdeněk Tomá­nek and double bas­sist Julien Pinel. This col­la­bo­ra­tion spar­ked a desire to move towards a joint crea­tive pro­ject. The trio conti­nues its explo­ra­tion of the mani­pu­la­tion of tex­tiles and the dia­logue bet­ween live music and dance within the pro­ject La Méca­nique du Poulpe. She also per­forms in the Ibex Walia pro­ject (contem­po­ra­ry Ethio-jazz).

Along­side her crea­tive pro­jects, she desi­gns and over­sees edu­ca­tio­nal and com­mu­ni­ty-based ini­tia­tives in part­ner­ship with other artists and dis­ci­plines (music, graf­fi­ti, video, etc.) and various per­for­mances.

 

Elo­die Beaudet’s cho­reo­gra­phic approach

Her cho­reo­gra­phic approach is roo­ted in the fun­da­men­tals of dances drawn from the tra­di­tio­nal reper­toire of West Afri­ca (groun­ding, pos­tures, ener­gy, rela­tion­ship to rhythm and music, connec­tion to the group, repe­ti­tion, etc.), as well as in their sym­bo­lism and func­tion.

It stems from a desire to breathe life into these move­ments and sen­sa­tions and deve­lop them into a new lan­guage of move­ment and nar­ra­tive, connec­ted to contem­po­ra­ry themes that inter­est and chal­lenge her. She blends this reper­toire with the new influences that shape her, brin­ging toge­ther the expan­sive, fluid move­ments of Man­din­ka dance with the lines and ener­gy of hip-hop. She enjoys taking move­ments from dance or eve­ry­day life, immer­sing her­self in them, then brea­king free from conven­tions, decons­truc­ting esta­bli­shed paths and ope­ning up new ave­nues of expres­sion. Crea­ting a lan­guage, a voice, that allows her to convey sto­ries and emo­tions.

In her work­shops, she starts with a few basic prin­ciples that a group can qui­ck­ly grasp and then sug­gests ways to move beyond them and return to them. This involves a back-and-forth bet­ween the group, which has a sha­red foun­da­tion, and the indi­vi­duals who can dis­co­ver other tech­niques that reso­nate with them. She places great impor­tance on each per­son connec­ting with their own fee­lings, the space around them, others who can sup­port or ins­pire them, and the cho­sen sound­scape. The star­ting point for the crea­tive pro­cess can then be an action, an emo­tion, an idea, or even those things we expe­rience or ima­gine eve­ry day.