Summary

Magali & Didier Mulleras Dance Company
created in 1988 in Béziers (France)

Magali Viguier-Mulleras (choreographer) and Didier Mulleras (choreographer, musician) both French, based their dance company in Béziers (South France) in 1986. They actually work in their own studios, the CED center, where they create and teach.

Their dance Company has already presented and toured 20 creations for the stage, and more recently mini@tures and INVISIBLE. They work closely, since 1992, with Nicolas Grimal (stage & film director, multimedia artist).

In 1997, they both build and launch the web site www.mulleras.com, and initiate a long term approach of links between new technologies and dance. They create short films and interactive animation on their website, in free access for all audiences. Web works have been discovered on-line by more than 120.000 virtual spectators, coming from 75 countries.

The company toured, on stages and screens, in 25 countries at this day, some tours helped by AFAA Paris, including, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Monaco, Portugal, UK, Thaïland, Malaysia, Germany, Belgium, India, Ukrain, Viet Nam, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Indonesia,... with a rich international media and press coverage.

From 2002 to 2005, they create their current long term project, “INVISIBLE”, coproduced by Le Cargo-Grenoble and CNC (French Cinematographic Center in Paris).

From 2006 to 2009, they launch the “96 DETAILS” project, designed for stages and screens.

Magali and Didier Mulleras are part of the new generation of artists who do not wish to remain subjugated to established styles, as much in the writing of movement as in the places of presentation. Their creative process using multimedia, notably internet, is today appreciated as a new path to be taken. Their close look at the world allows them to confront their dance to the technical improvement of this millenium, showing a new dance in ever-changing settings... 

"TRACES"

As part of the global artistic project “96 details”, the stage performance "TRACES" proposes a fusion and interaction of distinct universes (dance, music, video, interactive and multimedia works).




Choreographers: Magali et Didier Mulleras

Dancers:
Severine Prunera, Elisabeth Nicol
Magali Viguier-Mulleras, Didier Mulleras

Scenography, technical direction,
multimedia & video, webmaster:
Nicolas Grimal

Music: Didier Mulleras


Compagnie Mulleras / « Traces (96 Details)”
Sadler’s Wells - LONDON
8 – 9 April, 2008

A review by Allan Taylor for THE LONDON TIMES

Traces is a contemporary dance piece incorporating sound and moving image to produce a dynamic fusion and interaction between a variety of media. On stage, the show creates a journey into a world of shapes and movements, sounds and colours in a collage of short sequences. Video projections on the floor and side screens create a new space dimension with which the dancers can merge.

Timed to pin drop perfection, Mulleras really had their head screwed on with this production. With so many moments where the syncopation and synchronisation could fail, the company manages to pull it off as seamlessly as if the multimedia projections were moving with the dancers themselves. The heavy contrast between the mediatised and the real makes for a good interplay between the strong choreography (by Magali and Didier Mulleras) and the minimalist beats.

What can so easily irk people about contemporary dance is its disregard for rhythm, but Mulleras seems to put it very much at the fore, making the snappy electro drumbeats and ticks an important dictator of the movement. Wavering between discomfort and sheer ambience, Mulleras create a work that thinks outside the box, as well as dances all around the inside of it before carrying it off the stage (quite literally, in fact!).

Outstanding moments come when a dancer is slowly replicated in video repeating the same dance moves over and over again in different spaces on the floor. Sometimes the dancer follows, and sometimes not, challenging expectations but also emphasising the falsehood of the replicated dancers.

Traces (96 Details) combines sparse sounds with strong colours and movement with impact to produce a contemporary dance piece with just the kind of punch that’s needed. You can either enjoy the fluid movement and absolutely perfect timing, or just let the piece wash over you in a sea of colour and choreography. Its minimalism and contemporary work at their best, combining big ideas with the technology that people should be forward thinking about. I’m already looking forward to seeing how Mulleras challenges itself in its next piece.