À DOMICILE (“AT HOME”) is a festival taking place in Guissény, a village in North Finistère.

Its purpose? To invite choreographers or artists with affinities for all things choreographic to work with village inhabitants.
Located between land and sea, its geographic context reveals what organizers have been trying to do for the past 10 years: having territories – human, in this case – meet, cohabit and create something together.

For me, the specificity of À DOMICILE is its atmosphere of open-mindedness and dialogue through the sensory. This is what I feel has been at play since it was created in 2007 by Alain Michard, its first artistic director. I took over the festival in 2010.

Our ambition is to continue expanding and developing these concerns over the coming years. One need only witness the constellation of propositions and collaborative approaches that have reigned here until now to imagine how incredibly diverse the future will be. One need only see the growing number of participants attending the performances. One need only observe the ever-growing involvement of a team that is more and more organized every year. One need only look at the increasing volume of partners, both structural and individual.

Being À DOMICILE is:

• for the guest resident artists, to be concretely with and at home. First, by staying in the home of a resident of Guissény. Sharing the processes, research time, and other moments that are rarely exposed. Feeling the friction of a framework, people, a place, and a history. Embracing all of these things, or simply focussing on a single aspect.
The residencies are an opportunity to develop a new project or work-in-progress, as well as to shake themselves up and see what comes out of these collaborations.

• for the local “natives” (to use the term that was dear to the artists Virginie Thomas and Yasmine Youcef, who participated in 2010), it is all about moving around. Hosting people. Trying a new approach, letting oneself embark upon a new adventure, breaking through new limits, discovering different methods used in the creative process or research, looking differently at their own context and landscape, immersing oneself in a memory or fiction, or simply imagining what it’s like to be someone else.

• Mickaël Phelippeau

À Domicile is a member of Nos lieux communs, a network of seven cultural structures dedicated to contemporary creation and live performance. Its projects take place in natural spaces, atypical places, and remarkable gardens in France : noslieuxcommuns.com