Square Root
A solo by Anne Nguyen – 2007, length 25 min
“My dance transgresses movement. My feet are sucked into the concrete. The cement blocks around me try to mould me to their image. I’m submerged by the crowd, it engulfs and carries me along the streets.“
Set to an original composition for cello, punctuated by poems embedding breakdance into the contemporary urban universe, Anne Nguyen reveals the mathematical function she uses to transform the circular movement of breakdance on contact with the stage: the Square Root. Anne Nguyen’s first choreographic piece won second prize in the Masdanza contemporary choreography competition in 2009.
2nd prize in the Masdanza contemporary choreography competition in 2009 (watch the video here)
Cast
Choreographer and dancer: Anne NguyenOriginal soundtrack / Composer and cellist: Raphaële Murer
Original soundtrack / Poems: Anne Nguyen
Original soundtrack / Narrator: Bérangère Nicolle
Artistic adviser: Faustin Linyekula
Lighting design: Laurent Vérité
Costume design: Claire Schwartz
Partners
Coproduction: Initiatives d’Artistes en Danses Urbaines (Fondation de France – Parc de la Villette (Paris) – Fonds Social Européen); Centre National de la Danse – Pantin, for the Festival Danse Hip Hop Tanz; ADDM 22.Project support: Ville de Charenton-le-Pont.
With the partnership of: Initiatives d’Artistes en Danses Urbaines (Fondation de France – Parc de la Villette (Paris) – Fonds Social Européen); Centre National de la Danse – Pantin; IDEE (Initiatives for Dance through European Exchange), supported by Culture 2000 – European Union.
The par Terre Dance Company is funded by l’Aide pluriannuelle du Ministère de la Culture / DRAC Ile-de-France, la Région Ile-de-France for “Permanence Artistique et Culturelle” and l’Aide au fonctionnement du Département du Val-de-Marne.
Anne Nguyen was awarded the 2013 SACD Nouveau Talent Choréographie prize and appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2015. She has been an associated artist to Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse from 2015 to 2018
“Square Root borders on brilliance, taking elements from breakdance and elevating them to a sophisticated, superior aesthetic plane. Accompanied by a serial piece for the cello, the choreographer puts to music her fluent and beautiful movements and endows them with a monologue of a dark, pulsing density.”El Paris - Roger Salas (October 2009)
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"Anne Nguyen creates a geometrical game on the empty stage set to demonstrate the principles of hip hop: how to transpose the original hip hop circle into a square; and how to extract its vital substance? The result is, as ever, astute and compelling, the vision of an artist intent on ridding hip hop of its clichés."Télérama Sortir – Rosita Boisseau (01 june 2011)
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“Square Root is the solo piece that made Anne Nguyen first known to the public: a young woman who was as much a mathematician as a dancer, as much an author of prose as of choreographic pieces finely woven around unpretentious hip-hop moves.”La Terrasse – Nathalie Yokel (February 2012)
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