The Story
As a choreographer, Vendetta Mathea starts the 'HOMME | ANIMAL' project with very talented dancers that she has trained for years. Extracts of the piece are presented in South American and on the stage of the National Choreographic Center of Biarritz France in the spring. When it is time to first perform the piece in a 45 min version for one all month at the Avignon Festival, magic occurs.
The 60 min piece has been first performed in Paris. Since then, the company has met thousands of viewers and critics exchanging pure emotions. The company danced the hundredth performance of the production in Les Ulis just before flying to New York and Los Angeles for the U.S. Premiere. After more than 150 performances, the company continues to dance HOMME | ANIMAL around the world from Saint-Petersburg to New York. In 2014, the company attended The Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the first time.
Vendetta Mathea is born in Detroit. Her mother, Floretta, is a dancer and her father, James, is a jazz musician working at Ford Motor Company. As she is a very powerful swimmer for the State team, she discovers dance with Manual Alum, Merce Cunningham, Jose Limon and Arthur Mitchell at the Dance Power Program at the age of 17 years old.
She makes her debut with Clifford Fears in Detroit. In the early seventies, she leaves her town for New York with 'a few dollars in her pocket'. Housed in a girl YMCA down town Manhattan, she is in search for dance. Vendetta Mathea auditions for Juilliard and receives a scholarship. Time moves fast for her. She becomes what a journalist will call her later on at the Avignon Festival: 'an adventurous poet'.
In 1971, she joins Walter Nicks Dance Company for a first tour in France. For about ten years, she dances for many New York companies and choreographers:
'The solo by Vendetta Mathea - very, very good indeed, the Kind of materiel that company showstoppers are made of." Dance Magazine - 1976
Back to Europe in 1981 for another of the yearly tours, she meets a French man who will become her husband, and she makes the choice to live in France.
In 1992, while she is still directing her dance company, Vendetta Mathea creates, in an old industrial factory, a hub for dance that has become a major venue for choreographic researches, artists-in-residence and professional training programs for young dancers and artists from all over.
www.la-manufacture.org
> Download the viewbook of Vendetta Mathea Dance Campus La Manufacture
