About

There are no new worlds—and there will be none—without our capa­city to inhab­it them here and now.
This is an artist­ic, soci­olo­gic­al, and eco­nom­ic pos­tu­late that imposes itself upon us today.
It is this here and now that dance works with.
Cho­reo­graph­ic cre­ation des­ig­nates pre­cisely the ori­gin­al oper­a­tion that sim­ul­tan­eously con­ceives both the hab­it­at and the way of inhab­it­ing it.

OASES is an asso­ci­ation that brings forth sens­it­ive and “engaged” pro­jects, groun­ded in a strong eth­ic of accom­pani­ment and rev­el­a­tion: eman­cip­a­tion, ima­gin­a­tion, cre­ation, connection…
Artists, res­id­ents, citizens—assembled.

OASES cre­ates oases of hos­pit­al­ity and con­vi­vi­al­ity, poet­ic refuges in chosen ter­rit­or­ies, by con­struct­ing pro­jects driv­en solely by the ques­tion of the cre­at­ive process.

OASES cre­ates tem­por­ary com­munit­ies of shared des­tinies by offer­ing col­lect­ive exper­i­ences of transformation.
Trans­form­ing the way we look at ourselves; our capa­city to ima­gine and to act; wel­com­ing unsus­pec­ted bod­ily avail­ab­il­it­ies; undo­ing the beliefs we hold about ourselves.
Shift­ing our rela­tion­ship to oth­ers, invent­ing new fictions.

OASES cre­ates shared temporalities.
Spend­ing time togeth­er to allow a com­mon object to emerge: this is pre­cisely where we prac­tice polit­ics, because doing polit­ics means cre­at­ing a we.
It is not about mak­ing every­one agree, but about enabling aware­ness of the import­ance of each person’s par­ti­cip­a­tion in the col­lect­ive process.
Tak­ing the time to allow desires for dance to emerge with­in territories.

OASES cre­ates the com­mons through the explor­a­tion of our differences—by gen­er­at­ing capa­city, open­ness to nov­elty, by bring­ing forth unfore­seen poten­tials, and by con­sid­er­ing our cit­izen bod­ies as oasis-bodies.

OASES is an asso­ci­ation based in Bretagne, led by cho­reo­graph­er Alban Richard in close col­lab­or­a­tion with the organ­iz­a­tion Les Indépendances.

THE PROJECT

To share and take part in a cre­at­ive pro­cess is to become an act­or in democracy.

We design cho­reo­graph­ic works, install­a­tions, games, per­form­ances, exhib­i­tions, for­ums, res­id­en­cies, encounters…
At the cross­roads of art and sci­ence, we ima­gine con­di­tions for action and cre­ate situ­ations for inhab­it­ing the world.
We build sens­it­ive meth­od­o­lo­gies and col­lect­ive dynam­ics based on mul­tiple part­ner­ships, in order to offer cre­at­ive pro­cesses to pro­vi­sion­al communities.

Each ter­rit­ory, each con­text, each his­tory, each envir­on­ment is engaged with col­lect­ively: artists, res­id­ents, com­munity part­ners, insti­tu­tion­al part­ners, elec­ted representatives…
Our desire is first and fore­most polit­ic­al and civic; through the shared prac­tice of cre­at­ive pro­cesses, we invite all par­ti­cipants to exper­i­ment with democracy.

We cre­ate the com­mons by think­ing and doing togeth­er, by set­ting ourselves in motion, by tak­ing action in order to make work.
Because cre­at­ing togeth­er is an exer­cise in cit­izen­ship with­in a democracy.

We accom­pany, pro­duce, and dis­sem­in­ate cho­reo­graph­ic works and events that encourage:
1. attent­ive­ness to our envir­on­ments: gar­dens, urb­an pub­lic spaces, nat­ur­al parks, coast­lines, remark­able sites
2. intergen­er­a­tion­al connection
3. the empower­ment of cer­tain communities
4. the devel­op­ment of know­ledge and the shar­ing of exper­i­ences around Health
5. train­ing and the trans­mis­sion of expertise

Our team brings about pos­sible encoun­ters emer­ging from the worlds of dance, art, archi­tec­ture, design, sci­entif­ic research, cul­tur­al policy, philosophy…
The work­ing pro­cess con­sists of back-and-forth move­ments between these dif­fer­ent ima­gin­ar­ies in order to con­struct diverse forms of realization.

We seek to invent modes of pro­duc­tion that are eco­nom­ic­ally and eco­lo­gic­ally restrained.
Care­ful obser­va­tion of each con­text offers us a mul­ti­tude of resources.
A pro­ject that is “suf­fi­ciently” right emerges from know­ing how to com­pose with what exists here and now, and from know­ing how to tell stor­ies with those present, through what remains to be explored.