History
Philippe Decouflé is one of the terrible children of French dance, this new wave which at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s will shake up the established milieu. Interpreter for Alwin Nikolais, Karole Ermitage or Régine Chopinot, he will quickly impose his score. A choreographic collage resembling cartoons on stage, a dance that does not take itself (not too) seriously. Having become famous thanks to his unforgettable staging of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Albertville Olympic Games in 1992, Philippe Decouflé is today an artist of international renown. These ceremonies had even earned him the expression “découfleries” designating his singular art of the encounter between the worlds of circus, image and dance.The imaginary, the fantastic and the phantasmagoric are indeed summoned.
Influenced by television, cinema, opera, advertising, circus arts, cabaret, musicals, contemporary art, this extremely acclaimed jack-of-all-trades takes dance out of its elitist yoke and creates successful machines with notably Codex (1986), Triton (1989), Decodex (1995), Shazam! (1998), Octopus (2010), Contact (2014), Panorama (2012), Nouvelles Pièces Courtes (2017) and this year, 2022, Stereo. He also directed commissioned works such as Iris, for Cirque du Soleil (Los Angeles, 2011).
In 1983, Philippe Decouflé founded the DCA Company to mark Vague Café for which he won the Bagnolet Dance Competition. As an emerging choreographer marked by film, comic book and circus, Philippe Decouflé immediately attracted attention for his resolutely humoristic and off-beat tone.
The success of Codex in 1986 launched a career which continued with La Danse des sabots commissioned as part of the Bleu Blanc Goude parade along the Champs Elysées to mark the 200 years of the French Revolution. Then came Novembre and Triton which marked the first collaboration with Philippe Guillotel whose extravagant costumes were to have a lasting effect on the world of the choreographer.
In 1992, Philippe Decouflé designed the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 16th Winter Olympics in Albertville (France). International recognition immediately followed and established Decouflé as a major creative force at the crossroads of the circus arts, image and dance. After a tour in South America in 1992 with Triton, he devised Petites Pièces Montées the following year as a tribute to Méliès. In 1995, moved to permanent new premises with his company in a former boiler room (“La Chaufferie”) in Saint Denis, North of Paris. With rehearsal rooms, offices and technical workshops, La Chaufferie soon became a laboratory of insatiable creation spawning multiple productions for many artists.
In 1997, he staged the Opening Ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the International Cannes Film Festival and then devised Shazam! which went on to be performed over 200 times in France and internationally before moving to the Paris Garnier Opera House in 2001. Keen to return to the stage, Philippe Decouflé choreographed and performed in Solo, a work to which he has returned since 2003.
Amongst his numerous world tours, the choreographer has retained a special connection to Japan. After creating the musical comedy Dora – The Cat who lived a million times in 1996 in Nagoya, he returned to Japan in 2003 where he created Iris after 2 months in residence in Yokohama. He subsequently transformed Iris into IIris and took this new version on an international tour. At the same time, he created Tricodex for the dancers of the Lyon National Opera House, which was staged in Châtelet in Paris and then traveled worldwide (Bilbao, Peking, Shanghai, London, New York,etc.).
In 2006, Philippe Decouflé created Sombrero, centering on shadow play and packed with cinema references. After Coeurs Croisés, a production with interpreters from the new burlesque scene, he created Octopus in 2010 at the Théâtre National de Bretagne, where he is now associate artist. This piece for 8 dancers is performed to the live music of Labyalla Nosfell and Pierre Le Bourgeois.
Over the last ten years Philippe Decouflé kept on creating new material (Panorama, 2012) Contact (2014), a musical and visual comedy for 16 dancers, singers, acrobats and musicians, Wiebo (2015) tribute to David Bowie for 19 performers, Nouvelles Pièces Courtes (2017) and Stereo (2022).
Meanwhile he revisited the company’s history by dipping into its past work with Panorama (2012) a combination of selected sequences from his early works (Codex, Vague Café, Jump) or with Tout Doit Disparaitre (2019) an immersive show with 50 performers presented in Paris at Chaillot, Théâtre National de la Danse. He also develops since 2012 Opticon, a project of interactive video installation, half way between contemporary art and fairgound stall.
Along with his stage work, Philippe Decouflé always remained keenly interested in video and film that he often use in his productions. His extensive body of work includes dance videos (La Voix des légumes, Jump, Caramba...), music videos for New Order (True Faith) and Fine Young Cannibals (She drives me crazy), advertisements (Polaroid, France Telecom...) and visuals (France 2 TV station) – all of which bear witness to his creative ease in several disciplines. As witnessed further by success of his short movie Le p’tit bal, which won awards worldwide.
In addition to his work with the company, Philippe Decouflé direct the 13th graduation year of the French Circus Arts Center with Cirk 13 (2002), and well as Désirs for the dancers of the famous Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris (2010) . He directed Iris (2011) for the Cirque du Soleil, a show on the theme of cinema at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, USA and Paramour (2016), first show created by Cirque du Soleil specifically for Broadway.