MEDIATHEK

he French Minister for Culture and Communication, Frédéric Mitterrand, has announced the appointment of the Australian choreographer Joanne Leighton as the new directress of the National Choreographic Centre of Franche-Comté in Belfort. The choreographic Center will become home for Leighton’s work as a choreographer and pedagogue. She succeeds Odile Duboc, who was the director of the institution since its foundation in 1992. The CCN (Centre Chorégraphique Nationale) in Belfort is one of the 19 CCN's which have been established in France since the 1980's as a state initiative to promote contemporary dance. Born in Adelaide and trained in Melbourne at the Victorian College of the Arts, Joanne Leighton joined the Australian Dance Theatre in 1987. After being awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Trust Grant she moved to London in 1991. She subsequently moved to Brussels in 1993 where her dance company, Velvet, was founded. Velvet has been programmed and coproduced by festivals and theatres across Europe, including France, Spain, Germany, Holland, UK & Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia and Italy, and is funded by the Belgian Ministry for the Arts. Her latest work, « The End », is a piece for 6 performers to the text « Lecture on Nothing » by John Cage. It was premiered at the Biennale for Charleroi/Danse in November 2009. In 2008 Joanne initiated « Mobile », a vast project that brings together all of her pedagogical activities for professional dancers, amateurs and students in Belgium and internationally. She is also choreographer associated to the Dance in Schools program CDWEJ in the french community of Belgium. Throughout 2010, she is in residence with her company Velvet at the theater Pôle Sud in Strasbourg and the Théâtre Scène Nationale in Orléans France. She was awarded the Belgian Choreography Prize in 1994, and more recently the SACD’s prestigious Performance Arts Award. Her work "Made In Taiwan" was recently included in the book: Revelations. (quelle: http://www.ausdancensw.com.au/JoanneLeighton/909/1553/3/0/0/)