Caroline Cornelis
Founded in 2006 by Caroline Cornelis, the Nyash Company has always been interested in finding ways to make young audiences more curious about and receptive to the language of contemporary dance. Nyash uses children’s fantasies as creative material, transforming them through the addition of dialogue, and reproducing them in poetic and choreographic terms.
After pursuing her career in acting alongside Frédéric Flamand, Paulo Ribeiro and Michèle Noiret, Caroline Cornelis discovered theater for young audiences while working in collaboration with the IOTA Company.
La petite dame and Tout ce qui nous sépare are the first pieces she created within her own company. In Kami, Terre Ô, Stoel, 10:10, Llum and Alter, the emphasis is on dialogue and the different confrontations between body and matter, body and objects, body and space. It is a matter of exploring the poetic relationships that can be brought into play by an everyday object (the chairs in Stoel) or space (the playground in 10:10), a material (light in Llum and clay in Alter).
Nyash Company refines its vocabulary through each one of its shows to create a real body language, somewhere between a conversation and a debate about the choice of what is to be seen, looked at, and understood.
But the exchange does not limit itself to relationships of representation, of viewed/viewer, it becomes more dynamic. Each show is accompanied by a mediation program. The dialogue continues beyond the stage, with the children, but also with teachers and future teachers, in the form of discussions and/or workshops. The exchanges that occur amongst these individuals often make it possible for them to change their approach to education and to consider the role of the body in their own practice.
