Hallet-Eghayan
A Historic Company
In 1977, after several years of study in New York, Michel Hallet Eghayan founded his Company as well as the Professional Training School (now a Choreographic Center). This dual creation reflects the ongoing connection between creation and training that defines its founder's work.
Since then, the Company and its Artistic Director have created over 100 choreographic works. Retour en avant, Orlando Furioso, Hommage à Kandinsky, Which Side Story, and Pour Giselle are today recognized as landmark pieces of contemporary French dance. Drawing on the heritage of human movement, Michel has developed his own language, focusing on choreographic form and movement. After an initial period of compositions centered on the theme of Variation (1977–1990), he began exploring roots and the connections between our origins and contemporary thought (1990–2000).
The Arts-Science Connection
Since 2000, the Company has ventured into new spaces at the intersection of arts and sciences. It has notably collaborated with Pascal Picq, a paleoanthropologist at the Collège de France, and astrophysicist Roland Bacon.
This dual work, combining artistic implicitness with scientific explicitness, has resulted in spectacular dance conferences where scientists share the stage with artists. It has also led to choreographic works that retain only the symbols of this shared exploration between arts and sciences.
Building on this experience, enriched by its artistic and scientific potential and with a magnificent Theater-Studio in Lyon at Les Échappées Belles, the Company’s future appears bright.
The founder continues to delve into the core repertoire of the Company, with Retour en avant (1983), recreated in 2008 as the opening of the Lyon Dance Biennale, for which it gave its title. This work continued with Pour Giselle (1982), which the choreographer revisited in 2011 as a commission for the Maison de la Danse. Works created in collaboration with Roland Bacon and Pascal Picq—13 heures et des poussières… and Which Side Story—have now become integral to the repertoire, with their success confirmed season after season.
This original project at the crossroads of arts and sciences led to the creation of the "Arts Sciences Society Hub" in 2012, as well as the establishment of a "Scientific Committee." This Committee includes all the universities of the Lyon Academy and certain prestigious schools. Its aim is to foster true “Investments for the Future.”