The festival "Dances in Kerhervy" – Lanester (Brittany, France)

1 ) General Settings:

Carried by the Eskemm Company since 2009, this festival gives a programming with professional and non-professional and takes place every two years on the outstanding site named the “Ship’s Graveyard” in Lanester.

Besides a programming dense and diverse, workshops for the public (dancers or not) are taking place during the day, optimizing the place occupation and the meetings between artists, dancers and spectators.

The festival is now an important axes of the company, because of the possibility to crystallize the whole artistic approach of a choreographer: visibility, accessibility and meetings around the dance theme.

2) Presentation and History

Since 1993 and the presentation of dance production in its first part of the evening, the festival of non - professional Theatre of Kerhervy made the beautiful days of the non - professional dance, by giving it a full day representation in 1998 on the initiative of Karine Le Bris, choreographer of the Eskemm company. This annual meeting, marked by a high frequentation, was favouring already the crossing of different public.

It’s in 2009 that the Company created the 1st edition of the festival “Dances in Kerhervy”, with as strong directive line, a programming with professional and non-professional, on the behalf of the meeting between all dancing actors  ; teachers, followers and artists, second, of a higher visibility of the choreographic creation in the direction of a wider public.

   Summary                      Program

The 2nd edition went for four days, from the 6th to the 9th of July 2011. For all, this was more than 20 productions scheduled with 7 from professionals companies and 15 from non-professionals ones. Otherwise this programming intense and rich, numerous cultural actions took place through the whole four days of the festival: Discovering workshop for beginners, workshop for dancers...

To organize an outdoors festival like this one, it’s exposing us to random weather conditions. This edition had to face a rainy weather. The attendance rate underwent an important reduction in comparison of the first edition. However, the moral balance-sheet is rather positive: an audience presents even with the rain, no cancelled shows, most of them went under the big top, the workshops were full, and the volunteer team was dynamic and enthusiast, a convivial atmosphere , all of this made this festival into a strong moment and full of emotions.

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2009 Edition

    Summary                    Program

This 1st edition went from the 30th of June to the 1st of July 2009 that is two days during those, workshops and productions went one after another.

The evenings were shared between selected non-professional dancers and invited artists.Under a sunny weather, this first edition gained a striking success as much by the attendance rate, the warm welcome from the audience, than by the enthusiasm of the volunteers and the participants.